CenterPOINTLESS
State officials are making us wait till next year to find out if CenterPoint Energy has overcharged us by 100 million dollars!
But aren’t you sick and tired of hearing the apologies from CenterPoint’s big boss Jason Wells for the negligence that cost so many lives during and after Hurricane Beryl? We sure are! And that’s why we went looking for CenterPoint’s high-priced ($$$) Board of Directors!
“It could have been avoided and she didn’t have to die”, said Janet Jarrett.
Hurricane Beryl didn’t kill 64-year-old Pamela Jarrett,
CenterPoint Energy’s power outage did…
Pamela was disabled…. Passed away in her sleep, sweltering with no air conditioning.
It was July 13th, 3 days after the Category One hurricane had already come and gone.
“Jarrett says her sister was on a CenterPoint emergency list, but her power wasn’t restored until Tuesday the 16th”, said ABC13’s reporter.
At least 15 other Beryl deaths have been blamed squarely on the loss of power… Two of the dead were without power for eight days.
“You know, our loss of life is terribly tragic. My heart goes out to those families who have lost their loved ones”, expressed Jason Wells.
We’ve all heard CenterPoint’s CEO Jason Wells apologize before, first because of power issues after the tornados of the Derecho in May… then a category one hurricane named Beryl.
“I know I personally let our customers down with both of those events. And for that, I’m deeply apologetic”, added Wells.
For weeks wells had refused to talk to us for and his exclusive interview with Channel 2 was what we in the business call damage control…
Just days before the public was set to crucify CenterPoint at a public hearing here in Houston.
It was staged crisis communications. Wells even donning a safety vest even though he was standing in the middle of a big field… but there was something Wells said that came back to bite him.
“These allegations from the city of Houston and forty other cities that CenterPoint energy has been overcharging to the tune of 100 million dollars a year”, asks KPRC reporter Gage Goulding.
“I don’t think that we’re overcharging our customers $100 million” replies Wells.
The governor of Texas has heard enough… Dan Patrick wants Wells to step down… or be fired.
“I believe it is time at this point the board of CenterPoint should ask for Jason Wells resignation, or I believe he should submit”, says Patrick.
Patrick is late to the growing chorus calling on wells to resign…. Some of the cities most famous had demanded he go months ago…within weeks of the Beryl disaster.
Mattress Mack: “These are my people coming in here crying because they are hot and they are miserable and they are dying.”
Patrick was sending a public message to CenterPoint’s 11-member board of directors. Whose silence since the disastrous storm is unacceptable
CenterPoint has told the securities and exchange commission their 8 top paid board members earn an average of 344-thousand dollars in cash, stock, and other compensation every single year.
You probably don’t know who they are… we are putting all 11 on the screen.
Attorneys like Wendy Montoya…. Ricky Ravens from Allstate, and businessman Martin Nesbitt are on the board of regents.
And Raquel Lewis the spokesman for TxDOT…. You’d think she’d seen a microphone before…
Andrea: “As a CenterPoint board member, why is Jason Wells still working for you?”
Raquel: “I’m not here to talk about CenterPoint…”
Andrea: “I understand… you don’t have to touch my microphone…”
Raquel: “You don’t have to be talking to me…”
Andrea: “Let go of my microphone.”
We even sought out the chairman of the board.
Andrea: “What do you say to the people who lost loved ones because of the power outage?”
Theodore Pound: “Very… extremely sorry.”
Andrea: “What about Jason Wells?”
Pound: “Very sorry, and he is very sorry too.”
Andrea: “Why is he still working for you? (Pound shuts the door of his car)
Published reports claim CenterPoint’s CEO Jason Wells makes more than seven million dollars a year. He has claimed resigning would cause the company to lose its momentum on fixing the neglect of the last decade….
“Having a finance person at the top of the chain indicates a prioritization of profit”, says Jay Dean during the House hearing.
“So how much profit did CenterPoint make last year?”
Wells: “Just under a billion dollars.”
Wells was hired four years ago as CenterPoint’s chief financial officer.
Before that he had spent 13 years at Pacific Gas and Electric out on the west coast. His final job was chief financial officer.
PG&E will forever be known for putting profit over people’s safety… Found criminally liable for the camp fire, the largest wildlife in California history.
3 months before Wells escaped to CenterPoint… PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter…
The utility had been accused of “recklessly failing to maintain and operate its electric lines and equipment”
“I am deeply, deeply sorry”, said PG&E CEO Bill Johnson at the time.
It sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?
“These people have paid the ultimate price for their lives because of the decision this company has made”, stated Ana Hernandez during the House hearing.
Wells faced the ire of state lawmakers in the weeks following the storm.
Jay Dean: “Y’all got caught with your britches down with this.”
Beryl was no hurricane Milton… just a category one story… but on the day it hit more than 85% or 2 million of CenterPoint’s Houston area customers lost power. 4 days later 1 million were still without power.
Some homes and businesses didn’t get their power back for 10 days.
Jay Dean: “What would have happened if it had been a cat 3 or 4?”
We all remember how worthless CenterPoint’s on line outage tracker was.
Wells told state lawmakers most of the outages were caused by trees falling on power lines… trees CenterPoint was responsible for keeping clear of powerlines.
Wells was in charge when CenterPoint assured us back in June they had been prepared for hurricane season… now CenterPoint admits there are at least 40 different ways they weren’t prepared
David Spiller: “We’ve got 3 issues here, inadequate preparation & vegetation management and time to restore power, and lack of communication.”
You may remember wells brought a fancy chart to that senate meeting after the hurricane last July to boast about 2 billion dollars in new investing they had made…
“You can see on the graph of the chart that historical investment in the Houston electric system was relatively flat for about 2 decades. 15:34 and as we embarked on an entirely new strategy, you can see the dramatic increase”, claimed Wells.
But Houston state senator Paul Bettencourt was ready… turned out nearly half that new spending was an 800 million scandalous investment three years ago for huge mobile generators…
The generators have generated no electricity for CenterPoint customers.
But the generators have generated wealth for CenterPoint investors … a 250-million-dollar profit… and a windfall for the start company that leased the generators…
Bettencourt: “All the evidence points to a bad or fraudulent contract.”
Its why Bettencourt wants CenterPoint customers to get their money back…
“The chairman of the PUC has already said that their looking at every legal way they can figure to how to get the 800 million dollars returned to the taxpayers”, explained Bettencourt.
“Storm Uri for Life Cycle was like our… That was our unicorn moment.))
After winter storm Uri in 2020, state senator Phil King wrote a bill that became law, allowing utilities to rent mobile generators for use during power outages…. A way to get hospitals up and running quickly in an emergency.
“I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of, to be honest,” said Phil King.
But it took a hurricane to find out the generators CenterPoint chose to lease have never been used.
Bettencourt: “None of those 15 megawatts, 15 units, those 32mw have been deployed since they’ve been leased since 2021. True or false?”
Jason Wells: “That’s true. They have not been.”
The origins of the contract between CenterPoint and lifecycle appear to be little more than a sweetheart deal.
Geoff Bland: “Life Cycle won the entire contract for…”
Knoell Coombs: “I think it had a lot to do with the fact that Life Cycle was based out of Houston.”
Or it could have to do with what’s been described as an inappropriate relationship between Life Cycle’s Knoell Coombs and David Lesar, at the time the CEO of CenterPoint.
Coombs used to run the corporate gym at Haliburton… where Lesar was CEO at the time.
She became a salesperson for Life Cycle power in September 2020, and in 2021, increased life-cycle’s annual revenue from less than a million dollars to more than 7 million.
When CenterPoint filed with the PUC to pass on the cost of the generators to ratepayers, the State Office of Administrative hearings rejected the idea flat out.
The court determined the cost was way overpriced… with another bidder coming in 44% cheaper.
CenterPoint had requested bids for short term leases on august 3 2021 with the response due in less than 3 days.
Bettencourt: “It’s clear the bid terms were altered to favor in my opinion this one bidder.”
That’s what Charles Griffey thinks. He’s a former senior vice president of Reliant Energy who is now an industry consultant
Charles Griffey: “My opinion hasn’t changed. It was a bad deal. Very questionable deal.”
Griffey testified about the Life Cycle CEO being a convicted felon, still on probation.
And he saw with his own eyes the connection between Lesar and Coombs.
Griffey: “She had pictures posted on Facebook which got taken down after I found them,” stated Griffey.
Andrea: “What do you remember from the pictures?”
Griffey: “It was a picture of the two of them in a hotel, in front of a hotel in Denver.”
CenterPoint customers are paying for $2.39 every single month for these useless generators…
Most of the emails between Life Cycle and CenterPoint are still hidden from the public… sealed by the State even though there is nothing we can find that says they have to be.
But the e-mails published by the Houston Chronicle reveal Jason Wells had his hands in the Life Cycle contract… working with the company even before the bid request was made public.
This email was sent at noon on August 3rd.
Wells was already rushing Life Cycle to prepare for a bigger deal.
“Let’s get past this short-term process and then immediately turn our attention to the longer-term structure
The bid request wasn’t published until five hours later.”
Testimony in the legal fight over this contract reveals why CenterPoint might have been in a hurry.
CenterPoint wanted to brag about a large long term expenditure plan at its analyst day in the fall of 2021.
Our chat with Mr. Lesar lasted about as long as it takes to turn on a light.
“Hang on, I have another call coming in”, said Lesar before hanging up the phone.
Lesar made the final decision on the Life Cycle contract. But that 800-million-dollar deal with your money. Wells agreed with it.
“Everything aligns with the decisions that were made, it was profits over people.”
“I’m absolutely shocked that the PUC allowed that. It overruled, the administrative law court on that decision,” said Senate King during the House hearing.
Two current PUC commissioners, Kathleen Jackson and Lori Cobos, cast votes that allowed CenterPoint to pass this 800-million-dollar smelly deal on to its customers…
Now Cobos might be having regrets… especially learning the contract can’t be terminated.
Lori Cobos: “There’s obviously you know there’s tremendous concern about the mobile generation units. 15 units that cost a lot of money and were not used. And the ratepayers are paying for it.”
Current PUC commissioner James Glotfelty was the lone commissioner who thought the contract was shaky at best.
“Is that a normal practice for a utility across the country that gets their rates paid for… Do they normally say 800 million dollars… oh we’ll go spend it and figure out the rules later?” asked Glotfelty.
But Wells still defends the 800-million-dollar boondoggle.
Senate King: “Would you today say that that is a reasonable cost assigned to the rate payers, to the consumers?”
Jason Wells: “I do.”
Now CenterPoint wants the public utility commission to approve a 5-billion-dollar infrastructure improvement plan…
Customers… who are already overcharged for the transmission lines that carry electricity would foot the bill.
“They cannot continue to be the pack mule you know for bad judgement.”
Bad judgement… It hangs over Jason Wells’ future.
CenterPoint has so far ignored the calls to oust Jason Wells… In fact, the Houston utility is hiring more top executives from California’s PG&E.
In May 2023 Christopher Foster was brought in as chief financial officer.
And just a month ago Keith Stephens was brought in as chief communications officer.
If that guy doesn’t know how to handle bad press, who does?
We should make sure PG&E and their negligent safety practices aren’t imported too. We’ve got our own problems. CenterPoint’s failure to properly maintain light poles likely cost lives.
Wells: “It was almost an entirely vegetation problem – we did have 3 thousand poles break.”
Osmose utility services is a major contractor all over North America, but it was also one of the utility pole maintenance contractors for PG&E…
House hearing: “Is CenterPoint maintaining the polls or do they use a 3rd party?”
Jason Wells: “We use a 3rd party for that test and treat program.” Rep: “Who is it?”
Wells: “Osmose.”
Rep: “Their name keeps coming up. They were the same group in the fire. Correct?”
Jason Wells: “Yes, sir.”
“Firefighters continue to battle the largest wildfire in Texas history. This morning the fire is only 5 percent contained,” informed the TV news report.
The smokehouse creek fire raged on for 3 weeks… killing two people, burning more than a million acres, and killing an estimated 10-thousand head of cattle.
Local TV station CW 39 overlayed the footprint of the fire onto our Houston area to help show us the magnitude of its size.
“The lawsuit against XL and two other utility companies alleges an improperly inspected wooden pole snapped off its base, causing the utility lines to hit the ground and starting the fires,” continues the TV news report.
Osmose is a defendant in multiple lawsuits stemming from the smokehouse creek fire.
Bettencourt: “We’ve got to have top-down guidelines on how utilities are measured. You know, it was just mind bogglingly stupid to have a public utility say they’re measuring against themselves.”
“I am weary, I am tired, I’m disappointed and I’m disgusted,” said a woman speaking at the PUC hearing. “I’ve heard sound like they come from a 3rd world country. And yet Houston is the energy capital, but CenterPoint didn’t have the foresight to protect that energy. To protect their customers and ultimately protect our lives.”
“The bible says the road to hell is broad and crowded. Please take the narrow path of the righteous and deny CenterPoint the rate increase and make them repay the 800 million they stole”, said another woman, crying, at the PUC hearing.
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