A court has delivered a resounding victory to the utility industry in its long-running fight with state regulators, concluding that the Public Utility Regulatory Authority under former Chairman Marisa Gillett broke an array of laws in order to impose what turned out to be flawed or illegal rate decisions.
In a sharply worded ruling, Superior Court Judge Matthew Budzik upheld every allegation two Avangrid gas subsidiaries made in lawsuits seeking to overturn year-old PURA rate decisions that not only denied the companies rate increases, but slashed then existing rates.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) at the Joseph H. Harper, Jr. Building at 10 Franklin Square in New Britain in March 2025. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
Under Gillett, PURA broke laws, deviated from accepted procedure, interfered with utility appeal rights, illegally froze commissioners out of the rate setting process and then violated public record laws to conceal the fact that she was making what amounted to illegal, and unilateral decisions on the rate cases, the decision said.
Budzik also took the unusual step of referring two PURA lawyers — General Counsel Scott Muska and Assistant Attorney General Seth Hollander — for investigation by an agency that disciplines lawyers. The referral is to determine if or how they were involved in what Budzik characterized as an intentional effort by PURA to keep him from learning that Gillett and her chief of staff destroyed records that might have shown Gillett was biased by tying her to an anti-utility newspaper column.
While a ruling for Connecticut Natural Gas and Southern Connecticut Gas was expected by analysts and lawyers following the case, its breadth and criticism were not.
For weeks, in spite of his continuing public attacks on utility credibility, Attorney General William Tong’s office has been in court quietly conceding the gas company allegations in an effort to have their suits removed from court and remanded to a new set of PURA commissioners for reconsideration.
“Reversing its long-stated legal position in this matter, PURA now admits that former PURA chairperson Marisa Gillett violated Connecticut law in how she conducted the underlying administrative proceeding and that Ms. Gillett’s actions prejudice the substantial rights of the plaintiffs, the Connecticut Natural Gas Corporation and the Southern Connecticut Gas Company,” Budzik wrote in his decision.
Budzik agreed to a remand, but ordered an entirely new rate hearing rather than a reconsideration, which would have been based on evidence compiled previously by PURA. Because of what he called errors resulting from PURA’s mishandling of the initial rate cases, Budzik said the prior record cannot be trusted.
Among other things, his decision said that “the procedural errors in the preceding below are so pervasive as to deprive CNG and SCG of a fair hearing and, therefore, to deprive the court of an appropriate record upon which to base its decision.”
“In light of the procedural errors outlined above, and the public interest involved in setting utility rates, the court concludes that, rather than making a decision based on a record complied in an unfair hearing process, the far better course is to remand this matter as set forth herein such that any decision on the merits of a final rate decisions can be based on a record that was complied fairly,” Budzik wrote.
Long before filing suit, CNG and SCG raised the same complaints about PURA’s procedural irregularities with the agency itself, but the complaints were dismissed as “largely contrived and much ado about nothing,” “bombastic,” “difficult to understand,” and “plain misdirection.”
Budzik’s ruling has implications beyond the CNG and SCG rate cases.
Under the leadership of Gillett, who resigned under pressure in late September and was replaced by Gov. Ned Lamont last month, PURA issued several rulings and rate decisions that have been criticized by utilities and industry analysts. If it can be demonstrated that those decisions were based on the same sort of irregularities Budzik found in the gas company cases, they too would be eligible for new hearings, according to a utility lawyer familiar with the ruling.
The State Bond Commission voted to borrow $155 million in order to remove some of the “public benefits charges” from electric bills. Marissa Paslick Gillett is chairwoman of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, which regulates electricity in Connecticut. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)
What’s more, PURA’s admissions about misconduct now apply to a related suit in which Eversource and Avangrid make many of the same allegations. While the gas company suits sought to overturn adverse rate decisions on administrative grounds, the joint suit seeks a ruling in Superior Court that PURA has acted illegally.
CNG and SCG, not surprisingly, applauded the ruling, which company spokeswoman Sarah Wall Fliotsos called “unequivocal.”
“Under former Chair Gillett, PURA violated state law in order to achieve the outcome they wanted, one that exacted severe financial and reputational consequences for our companies, risked our customers’ experience of safe and reliable service, and harmed the public interest. Nor are these consequences limited to this rate case appeal alone, but they have permeated cases since 2023: it is clear from this decision that PURA must now fix them all,” Fliotsos said.
“We appreciate today’s strong admonition of the biased and corrupt behavior by several individuals at PURA, who, in light of this unsparing order, should now retract their years of comments disparaging our companies and other utilities in Connecticut,” she said.
The gas companies had opposed, unsuccessfully, in now turners out — Tong’s efforts to remand the case for a new rate hearing, pressing for — among other things — a ruling from Budzik on their claim that the adverse decisions were based in part on what they called Gillett’s anit-utility “bias.”
That bias was demonstrated, the gas companies argued, by a text message exchange between Gillett and one of her chief Legislative backers, State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport and co-chairman of the Energy and Technology Committee.
An image of the text exchange between PURA Chair Marissa Gillett and state Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, obtained through a Freedom of Information request. The portions blocked out are private numbers. Hartford Courant.
In the exchange, obtained by the Courant, the two appeared to discuss Gillett’s involvement in an a widely-ridiculed, anti-utility op-ed that was published by the online news source CT Mirror in December 2024 under the bylines of Steinberg and the other committee his co-chair and fellow Gillett backer Sen Norm Needlemher Chief of Staff, Theresa Govert, for review.
In an effort to learn whether Gillett had a role in producing the op-ed, the gas companies sought a court order compelling Steinberg and Needleman to appear at depositions and answer questions under oath. The two had been fighting the deposition request.
Budzik denied the request for Needleman and Steinberg depositions as moot, since with Gillett’s resignation and the appointment of new PURA commissioners, questions about her alleged bias will not be an issue at new gas company rate hearings.
“The court has now remanded this matter for an entirely new hearing and Ms. Gillett has resigned her position at PURA,” Budzik wrote. “Therefore, Ms. Gillett will not participate in the new hearing, or the compilation of a new record, and any claims as to her alleged bias are moot.”
Coincidentally, in an appearance on a Fairfield County radio station Wednesday, Steinberg said he received a draft of the oped from Needleman and suggested that Gillett may have been involved.
“She may have looked at it. I got my draft from Senator Needleman.,” Steinberg said. “I did not talk to her about it other than saying that we were working on an editorial. And even if she corrected some facts or at least fact checked it, what difference does it make?”
Budzik’s referral of Muska and Hollander to the Statewide Grievance Committee is based on what he referred to in his decision as PURA’s efforts to prevent the court and the gas companies from probing Gillett’s possible involvement in the oped for evidence of bias.
After the Courant reported in February on the text message exchange between Steinberg and Gillett that specifically mentioned an oped, Budzik issued repeated orders requiring PURA to search its records and produce any documents related to the exchange or the oped.
PURA responded to the court through its lawyers that it could locate no such records. But PURA failed to inform the court until much later that Gillett and Govert had programs on their telephones that automatically deleted text messages.
CT judge learns ex-state official misled court on records that were erased
“Moreover, and even more troubling, is that the circumstances of this case indicate that PURA actively sought to conceal the fact of the auto-delete function from opposing counsel and from the court,” Budzik wrote.
Budzik wrote that Hollander later conceded that PURA was aware of the auto-delete function, but someone in the agency chose to conceal it when ordered by the court to produce records under a process known as discovery.
Muska intentionally misled the court about the text messages, claiming in an affidavit that a search was underway for the records even though he knew they had been irretrievably deleted, Budzik wrote in his decision.
“But by June 6, 2025, PURA was aware that those searches were no more than empty gestures in light of the operation of the auto-delete function,” Budzik wrote. “Yet Attorney Muska still chose to file his affidavit with the court in a plain attempt to get the court to deny further discovery. The court concludes that Attorney Muska’s June 6th affidavit was intended not only to mislead opposing counsel, but to mislead the court itself.”
