{"id":5377,"date":"2019-05-09T23:22:36","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T23:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawaiioceannews.com\/?p=5377"},"modified":"2019-05-12T19:13:41","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T19:13:41","slug":"dobor_looking_to_skim_profits_from_electrical_scheme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hawaiioceannews.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/09\/dobor_looking_to_skim_profits_from_electrical_scheme\/","title":{"rendered":"Hawaii\u2019s DoBOR Apparently Seeks to Skim Profits in Electrical Billing Scheme – Latest Public Harbor Fee Increase Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t13-234-10 - Near-1000% Electrical Fee Increases Legally and Ethically Troubling\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tONE VOICE<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

DLNR\/DoBOR\u2019s latest version of the proposal to raise fees<\/a> in Hawaii\u2019s public harbors, Statewide, is seeking something close to a 1000% increase in electrical flat-rate fees for harbor tenants who are not paying Hawaiian Electric directly for their electrical consumption.<\/span><\/p>\n

This fee will be charged REGARDLESS of usage and will amount to $40\/month for non-liveaboard tenants, and $100\/month for liveaboards.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those not acquainted with how average boaters use electricity in our public harbors, and how they are charged for that usage, here is a little primer:\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

There are two categories of tenants in are public harbor system, the liveaboard tenant, and the non-liveaboard tenant.\u00a0 There are two categories of electrical users in our harbor system:\u00a0 tenants who pay HECO directly for their electrical consumption, and those who use completely unmetered State-supplied electricity.\u00a0 Why has the State supplied electricity never been metered?\u00a0 Short answer, a paperwork convenience for the State.\u00a0 State's official answer: it was too expensive to do that.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Reality: since 1994, the State of Hawaii's public harbors administrator, DLNR\/DoBOR, has barely paid attention to tenant electrical revenue and, as such, has lost untold thousands of dollars in deficit electrical costs. In short, it would have been far cheaper to have just put in metering for each slip not metered by HECO.\u00a0 The State had two chances to do this (1975 and 2010), but whiffed it on both occasions.\u00a0\u00a0 To this day, DoBOR still does not know the usage debit created by electrical users in the public harbor system, Statewide.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Ignorance seems to beget more of it:\u00a0 DoBOR's solution?\u00a0 Charge users a 1000% increase over current flat-rate fees.\u00a0\u00a0 1000% means the guy who uses his boat once a month and doesn't plug into his electrical outlet will now owe the State $40 per month for electricity he never uses.\u00a0 It means that the liveaboard tenant that is running mostly off of solar power, has no major appliances, and lives on a 25-foot boat (the inside of which is smaller than a walk-in closet), will now pay the same $100\/mo as the family of four on the 50-foot trawler (the size of a condo).\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

We have a mutual friend in Kailua, Oahu, with a million+ dollar home that pays $80 per month (including the $17 monthly hook-up fee) for electricity to HECO, for all of their electrical needs.\u00a0 And, no, he doesn't have solar panels on his roof. <\/span><\/p>\n

Please see this article<\/a> for more on the lack of responsible rationale for flat-rate electrical charges in Hawaii's public harbor system.<\/span><\/p>\n

This latest version of Chapter 13-234<\/a> will allow for tenants to opt out of using the electricity at their dock altogether, something that was missing in the last version.\u00a0 The stipulation written into the rules package is that if they catch you, even once, using electricity at your pier, after you\u2019ve opted out, they will begin charging you $40\/$100 per month from that day on, REGARDLESS OF ACTUAL USAGE.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what this means is that if you happen to need to use a drill for a few minutes and one of the harbor agents sees you, you will find, on your next billing, and every billing thereafter, a charge for the new 1000% increase amount.\u00a0 No opting out after that!<\/span><\/p>\n

This section of the 13-234 document<\/a> is still teaming with legal and ethical problems, as are other sections of the document.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, Ed Underwood can\u2019t seem to come up with a basis-in-fact for the $40\/$100 flat rate numbers themselves.\u00a0 He said that DoBOR did a study \u201c. . . a while back. . .\u201d in an attempt to determine average usage in the AWSBH, but when we asked him for a copy<\/a> of this, he promptly told us that he\u2019d shredded the study paperwork.\u00a0\u00a0 He then cited a suspiciously nebulous \u201cappraisal\u201d by a Mr. Oshiro.\u00a0 When we asked for that, it too was unavailable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Troubling, too, is that tenants caught up in this scheme are being asked to pay for, not only personal consumption, but also the dock infrastructure electrical usage as well, something that, by long established accounting practice, is deducted from general revenues as part of marina maintenance costs.\u00a0 Those tenants paying HECO directly do NOT pay for marina electrical costs, but only for their own personal consumption.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another problem was the lapse in time, 1994 to the present: why hasn\u2019t DoBOR been raising the rates incrementally, at least every five years? A simple thing, perhaps, but an indicator of the bigger picture, the slip-shod way in which the DLNR\/DoBOR has been administering our public harbor system for decades: none of the public harbor financials that have been presented to the public make much sense, as was pointed out to and by legislators during the recent legislative review and then deferral of SB1257.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another problem with the $40\/$100 numbers is that they do not reflect the true increase in electrical rates since 1994, the date that Underwood cites as the last time rates were established.\u00a0 These latter rates reflect a nearly 1000% increase over 1994 figures, but, in actual fact, electrical rates in Hawaii have only increased by 133% over that period of time:<\/span><\/p>\n

1994 = avg. 12.4 cents per KWH<\/span><\/p>\n

2019 = avg. 28 cents per KWH (Oahu)<\/span><\/p>\n

The increase of 133% clearly indicates that the fee should be $25.63\/month for liveaboards, and $13.40 for non-liveaboards., and so, we\u2019re not sure where Underwood got the near-1000% numbers from.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t sound like he\u2019s sure either.\u00a0 But even these numbers make little sense because of the huge variation in the consumption patterns of smaller vs. larger vessels.\u00a0 Surely, a 40-foot vessel with four persons living aboard will consume considerably more electricity than a lone liveaboard on a 26-foot vessel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because of this, a system of assessing vessels according to the major appliances being used on board and then charging accordingly is the only fair and just way to charge non-HECO tenants for electrical usage.<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

At the end of a recent Hawaii Ocean News survey in which we spoke to harbor tenants on the floating piers at the Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor (AWSBH), nearly 80% said that they would \u201copt out\u201d of the new electrical fee requirement and \u201ctake their chances,\u201d potentially creating a loss in electrical revenues and exponential legal\/enforcement headaches for an already compromised DOCARE, now short of officers and facing an investigation by the Attorney General\u2019s office.\u00a0 We were told that a court challenge may also be in the works should the rule pass as written now.
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