The Commission has scheduled a hearing to consider the gas utilities' proposed compliance plans to implement RM35. The hearing will be held December 8, 2009, at 10AM. Comments on the plans are due December 1, 2009. The full text of the Notice of Hearing is available on the NEM Website.

RM35 requires utilities offering utility consolidated billing to elect to either purchase supplier receivables or to prorate customer payments. In their compliance plans, BGE, Columbia and Chesapeake all proposed to purchase supplier receivables. WGL proposes to implement pro-ration of payments. BGE's POR discount rate is intended to recover "prudently incurred costs associated with the purchase of receivables, such as supplier uncollectible expenses, credit and collection expenses, operational costs incurred by BGE that are directly associated with COMAR 20.59, and a risk component of 1.25% that will be paid to BGE for retention by its shareholders to compensate BGE for the risk associated with the continuation of the supplier-customer relationship." Columbia's POR discount rate will reflect its: "1) commodity-related bad-debt collections; 2) program development and operations costs associated with COMAR provision implementation, including administrative and collection costs; and 3) the risk associated with the continuation of the supplier-customer relationship." Columbia will make a separate filing detailing the computation. Chesapeake proposed a 1% POR discount rate, to reflect the uncollectible expense in its last base rate case.

The utilities implementation dates for POR/pro-ration are proposed as follows: BGE - April 2010; Columbia - January 2011; Chesapeake - 2nd quarter of 2010; and WGL - mid-October 2010. The full texts of the BGE, Columbia, Chesapeake and WGL Compliance Filings are available on the NEM Website.

PPL sought clarification of the Order on measures to minimize barriers to retail competition in its service territory. Specifically, with respect to the issue of customer lists, PPL maintained that there was an inconsistency between Commission regulations, a prior Order and the Commission's website about policy on the disclosure of customer information. In resolution, the Commission directed PPL to update its customer database and release the following information at least thirty days prior to the expiration of its rate cap: customer name, account number, rate class and subclass, service address and billing address. With regard to the release of customer telephone numbers, the Commission was concerned about the effect of Do Not Call prohibitions. It therefore, "direct[ed] . . . Chief Counsel to obtain a legal opinion from the Attorney General regarding this ambiguity." The full text of the Order is available on the NEM Website.