Senate Bill S9263A

                                 
BILL NUMBER: S9263A

SPONSOR: JACKSON
 
TITLE OF BILL:

An act to amend the public service law, in relation to requiring public
assistance payments for residential gas and electric service are
accepted and credited by utilities

 
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section 1 amends Section 32 of the Public Service Law to require gas and
electric utilities to accept and credit public assistance payments,
without delay, made on behalf of residential customers, regardless of
account status, and to treat receipt or notice of such payment as
payment for all purposes under HEFPA, including termination, restora-
tion, and collection activity.

Section 2 states the effective date.

 
JUSTIFICATION:

              

The Home Energy Fair Practices Act (HEFPA) is premised on the principle
that residential energy service is essential to health and safety and
that public assistance payments are a core mechanism for preventing loss
of service. HEFPA integrates payment protections, termination safe-
guards, and social services assistance into a unified statutory frame-
work intended to ensure continuity of service for vulnerable households.

In practice, however, utilities can employ administrative practices that
frustrate this intent. Although public assistance payments are rarely
refused outright, utilities frequently decline to credit or apply such
payments based on account status, internal processing timelines, or
technical billing classifications. As a result, assistance intended to
prevent termination or restore service may be delayed, returned, or
rendered ineffective, leaving customers exposed despite the availability
of public funds.

This bill seeks to clarify that utilities companies should accept public
assistance payments "as is" upon receipt of a guarantee or upon receipt
of the payment itself because utility companies should not engage in
activity that delays the application of the grant or the guarantee of
payment. One example of concerning action is when a utility company
refuses to accept a guarantee of payment or apply the payment itself,
until the customer pays an additional amount directly to the utility.

Such practices convert HEFPA's protections from substantive safeguards
into conditional ones that are dependent on internal utility procedures
rather than on customer eligibility or need. This bill addresses that
problem in a narrow and targeted manner by clarifying that utilities
must accept and credit public assistance payments regardless of account
status and must treat receipt or notice of such payment as effective for
all HEFPA protections.

The bill does not expand eligibility, increase benefit levels, require
additional appropriations, or mandate regulatory rulemaking. It simply
ensures that existing public assistance functions as the Legislature
intended.

 
LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:

None.

 
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT:

No fiscal implications.

 
EFFECTIVE DATE:
Immediately.