Martha Peine of Eureka Springs started a regulatory battle against one of the largest electric companies in the country two years ago and reached a $4.2 million settlement Monday.
Peine filed a complaint with federal regulators against American Electric Power in January 2014, claiming that the utility improperly charged customers $92,511 that it spent in 2013 on lobbying, advertising, charitable contributions and other nontransmission-related expenditures.
Peine earned her law degree from the University of Texas and passed the bar in 1995, she said Tuesday. But she hasn't practiced law since 2002.
American Electric owns Southwestern Electric Power Co., which provides electricity to about 116,000 customers in western Arkansas. Peine filed her complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
The commission looked into the matter and detected additional problems.
The disputed charges soon ballooned to almost $2.5 million.
As a result of discussions this year, American Electric Power reached an initial settlement agreement with the commission's staff, but Peine refused to agree to it.
After more negotiations, on June 6, Peine and the commission's staff reached an agreement that American Electric Power will credit $4.2 million to ratepayers in a nine-state area.
The ratepayers are not just customers of SWEPCO or American Electric Power but any utility that uses the transmission services of American Electric Power's western zone, said Peter Main, a spokesman for SWEPCO.
The $4.2 million settlement covers a period from 2008-15, Main said. It is unclear how many customers are affected by the settlement, he said. And it's unknown how much credit each customer will receive.
Peine began researching how SWEPCO recovers its transmission costs in 2013. At the time SWEPCO had filed an application to build a 345-kilovolt transmission line in Northwest Arkansas, Peine said.
"Beginning in August 2013, there was an ongoing process where I requested documents for review -- the work papers underlying their calculations," Peine said. "I spent a lot of time preparing the challenge that I filed [in 2014] and that was a 90-page document."
She did more research on two trips to Washington, D.C., for about three days each, Peine said.
"I'm not sure I could put a number of hours on it, but it was quite a bit of time," Peine said. "I just felt like if I would continue to try to learn the process, continue to try to put one foot in front of the other until they told me to go home and not come back I was going to keep trudging along."
Payment for her work was not included in the settlement agreement, Peine said.
"I'll get the same refund that all the other ratepayers will get," she said.
Business on 06/15/2016