The responsibility buck at PEPCO should go to and stop with the top execs and the board of directors. Why weren't they all fired when the gross neglect and deficiencies in performance first came to light? Keeping them in place, with their lavish pay and benefits, rewards incompetence and failure. It's not to late to require a complete turnover at PEPCO's top.

I favor public ownership of all utilities, decentralized as much as possible.

Montgomery County Council president
SHOULD FINE PEPCO FOR EVERY OUTAGE 1,000 AND EVERYDAY $500 FOR PEOPLE STILL WITH OUT POWER.
PEPCO SAYS IT CUT BACK AND DOWN TREE'S
SORRY ALL TREES SHOULD BE
1- BELOW POWER LINES
2- CUT 20 FEET AWAY FROM POWER LINES
3- FINED FOR EVERYPERSON WITH OUT POWER PAY THERE BILL FOR 1 MONTH
4- OTHER COMPANY'S TO HAVE A CHANCE TO OFFER POWER ON MO CO

THANKS

The entire management and board of PEPCO should be fired; find someone who is competent enough to do the job.

I would complain about PEPCO, but I've taken the conservative vow to only whine about government.

as well as the dispatcher(s) that sent no less than 8 boom trucks to a neighbor hood that has underground utilities. how many man hours were wasted because these overhead linesmen were at a site were they can't work?

First of all, this is the umpteenth time we have said, "PEPCO should change!" It never happens and it probably never will with the incompetence around here. I could do a better job and I am seventeen! I agree with Richard Hayes, not only should the entire board be fired but they need an entirely new staff and PEPCO should be put under government control until such a time where PEPCO is actually decent enough to call itself a power provider. My family got a permanent generator after our outrage with PEPCO got so bad. During Snowpacalypse a couple years ago we were without power for two weeks! Fining PEPCO won't get us anywhere because they have deep pockets; what they need is new leadership and order. I could go on and on with stories of PEPCO's negligence but right now we need focus on fixing this (though it will be hard to) while we have a noticeable official on our side. If none of this works, we need an immediate alternative.

Roger "pull the plug" Berliner? Where is his oversight of the no-bid multi-million dollar artificial turf contracts in the county? He pulled the plug on that hearing so the public couldn't watch. No-bid purchases (actually, there aren't any contracts) of multi-million dollar artificial turf don't warrant any County Council oversight, even though that actually involves the expenditure of county tax dollars?

Last year PEPCO felled and mangled thousands of trees in the county - because it was the "cheap" way out. The county lost canopy, and cooling shade. And what good did it do? It would have been a lot more cost effective to put the money used to mangle trees, and environmentally damage the county into underground transmission.

Years back, PEPCO claimed it would have to maintain TWO types of crews. But it does anyway, because new developments have underground transmission. Streets are torn up for other reasons, but lines are not being put underground.

In NY, the lights don't go out. In neighborhoods around here with underground lines they tend to remain on as well - unless overhead lines lead to those neighborhoods.

Stop cutting down the county's green resources to save dough to stuff the pockets of PEPCO executives.

I'd like to see the County Council take some meaningful action to get PEPCO to bury cables, rather than congratulating themselves on coming to agreements to let the company cut down the trees.

PEPCO is still in the dark ages. No other company is so inadequate when it comes to dealing with power outage. They spend a ton of money (extra crews, overtime pay...) trying to fix problems rather than preventing them. They also spend more money making beehive they care about customers than really taking care of them. Pitiful. Each time there is wind, rain, thunder, hail, or snow (so over 50% of the time) I expect the worst. There is no other region in the world that is so poorly "served" by its electric company !
Wen one raises the (simple) idea of burying the cables, PEPCO comes with outrageous - and laughable - figures of $ 1 Mo. per mile. That alone is proof positive that the company is worth less than nothing !

I am shocked no one has brought uo the obvious. Climate change and global warming is happened faster and sooner than scientists had predicted. We need to lessen out dependence on fossil fuels and start having a serious dialog about how we are going to deal with these issues of it is going to be a horrific time of storms, hurricanes and earthquakes. And don't forget we have many nuclear power plants on the East Coast which subject to an Earthquake could give us our very own Fuckishima, Time to deal with the reality or we have more to worry about then Pepco.

Pepco, POM on the stock exchange pays a hefty didvidend, about 30% higher than comparable companies. The fine they paid last year had no real effect and they still are very profitable. They need more discipline- a much bigger fine.
The county has failed here as well. The roads where I live are more like tunnels than roads. The trees have been allowed to grow for years with little or no attention from the county. Not only do these trees fall on power lines, they also fall on cars and restrict the visibility of both signage and other traffic. The county has a lot to answer for as well as Pepco

Berliner is right. It's not just the wires. It's PEPCO's pitiful communications and data discrepancies and "glitches" that are equally as frustrating as their inability to restore power within a reasonably expected time frame. Putting wires underground won't solve those problems.

Today, (7/10), I saw a contract tree service on QO road between WineSap and Quince Mill pruning limbs , laying on the wires, that I reported well over a year ago!!!

I support a study of public ownership. Electric distribution is a monopoly and a public service. Public services which are natural monopolies should be controlled by the public, not for-profit companies. Public services should be run for the benefit of the public, not for private profit.

Obviously the cost of burying the power lines is far beyond what the residents of Montgomery County can afford at this time. I would like to suggest that Park and Planning not allow trees to be planted along the right-of-ways, which grow up into the power lines overhead. Are we not helping to cause our own problems? This would at least be a start.

Inept upper management and policies aside, the workers who were outside in the extreme heat -- including those from other states -- deserve our thinks for their efforts.

Why doesn't Berliner leave the Council and head up the publicily owned power company he is talking about . He seems to have all the answer.

10:25 am on Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The infrastructure is terrible. Go look at the transformers up on the poles. Most are rusted hulks. Of course they blow when hit with a surge. Improve the infrastructure. Start putting main lines under ground. NOW. Just the main ones. No dividends to PEPCO shareholders for a while. . . Stop wining about not being able to afford it. It costs more to do work on overtime during emergencies than it does to properly maintain and take care of equipment

My cudos and thanks to the gneral workers of PEPCO who got the power
back to my Kensington Estates home in about 10 hours time. I can't sleep
if there is no air circulation; so my hat is off w/gratitude to the gneral workers who did a splendid job. It is too bad that putting electric cables underground was not avaIlable in the early 50's when our neighborhood was
established. Let's bee thankful that it wasn't any worse than it was!!!

I'd be happy if it had only been ten hours, but it was FIVE days. And all the power is my neighborhood is underground. The problem was in the adjoining neighborhoods which feed ours.

I don't criticize the workers. I think the problem is old equipment. We had transformers blow up on the poles, catch on fire, once power was restored etc. If you look up, most of them are very very very old pieces of rust, as I mentioned before.

First step - political grandstanding. Second step - never followed by the fact that all these "priorities" need to be funded by ratepayers. Take the second step, tell us what these things will cost each of us and then take the public temperature , which will be a lot cooler, faced with reality. It's easy to kick Pepco around but maybe we are getting what we paid for and the lack of foresight of our pols to demand more. Berlinger is an energy consultant in his day job, it takes an outage for him to figure out that there's a looming problem? He should give back his $80,000+ council salary and the business he generates off of his position, because he failed us here more than the utility. My tax dollars are paying for a Monday morning quarterback?

complain complain complain. Thats all the poor folks can do is whine whine whine. Which is harder for you folks to do play board games with the kids, talk to your kids, make it it an adventure. Oh, i know the internet doesn't work we are a little uncomfortable because we don't have AC. WE LIVE IN THE BEST OF TIMES. QUIT BLAMING PEPCO EVEN IF ALL THE PROBLEMS WERE SOLVED YOU WOULD STILL COMPLAIN ABOUT SOMETHING VERIZON OR COMCAST COME TO MIND

Steve; I guess your world is very rosie. Nothing for you to compliant about, Huh! Well stay in your Ivory tower for now, but soon they, it will come calling on you. When you do get your Wheaties pee'd in don't complain here, cause no one will listen.

Pepco should pay me for the week of hotel room and food I had to throw away. $1000.00 spent during a week of power outage! PEPCO you S#$K! I got the electric bill in the mail. Why can't I send them a bill?

Well Richard, as you can see, there is a big difference between ten hours of power outage and five days of power outage. No hotel expenses for you, no hundreds of dollars lost in food and medicine, no danager to any pets, and no risk of heat exhaustion I mean it is not as if it was 78 degrees during those five days.

Imagine losing power for five days when it is 5 degrees above zero outside. . . Would it get below freezing inside your house for a couple of days????

This guy is so predictable. Seize upon a crisis and milk it for all its worth. Its fashionable to beat up on Pepco because everyone else is doing it.

Good think that Berliner did not live in Florida after Hurricane Andrew. People I know did not have power for five weeks.

Joe, all Berliner is doing is trying to get Pepco to redirect its cash flow to repair its infrastructure rather than paying high dividends. Pepco has a gross profit margin of 45%. See http://ycharts.com/companies/POM/gross_profit_margin Pepco needs a kick in the derriere to spend money on its infrastructure INSTEAD of on dividends to its shareholders (which have considerably HIGHER than the S & P 500 in recent years). The only real way to do that is to threaten its existence by replacing it with something else, in order to force it to divert its cash flow from dividends to replacing old, worn our infrastructure. That is what Berliner is doing. Were Pepco investing in its infrastructure instead of paying higher-than-average dividends, we wouldn't have this problem and Berliner could just sit back and say nothing. Of course, had Pepco invested in its infrastructure instead of paying higher-than-average dividends, we would not have these outages.
The real problem seems to be that certain Pepco executives seem to prefer the glory that comes from paying out large dividends rather than the satisfaction that comes from replacing worn transformers when they need it.

I think we should go with the underground wiring. It is safer and more aesthetically pleasing.