Electric Bill Query Sparks Big Caltrans Refund

The first thing Susan Kosek noticed was a discrepancy in her employer’s light bill.

“Something didn’t seem right,” she recalled.

Because her employer is Caltrans, which spends about $2.2 million a year on 8,100 highway lights in Orange County, this was no small matter.

Kosek, an electrician, went about comparing bills with their corresponding circuits. Her conclusion: that Southern California Edison had overcharged Caltrans--and thus the taxpayers--more than half a million dollars for freeway lighting in the county.

As a result, Edison has refunded $500,000 so far to the state, with a final refund payment of $100,000 expected within the next three months. The company also has agreed to change its rate structure in a way that probably will save Caltrans another $50,000 annually.

The episode has inspired the transportation department to begin studying its electric bills throughout Southern California, and a report on that investigation is due early next year.

“We feel great about it,” said Leslie Manderscheid, a spokeswoman for Caltrans. “We’re saving the taxpayers money and improving our efficiency.”

An Edison spokeswoman was somewhat less effusive. “We’ve identified that it was a shared lack of communication,” Jillian Maharg said. “We have procedures put in place to improve.”

The misunderstanding, both sides agree, centered on more than 500 freeway lights for which Caltrans had been double billed. It happened when Caltrans upgraded its freeway lighting system in Orange County by putting meters on lights. However, many of them remained in Edison’s records as subject to the old flat rate as well as the new metered rate.

Thus, for many years--in some cases since 1988--the state had been paying twice for the same lights.

“It was a big deal. We have lots of accounts [lights],” Manderscheid said.

In reviewing the light bills, Kosek came across another interesting fact: that Caltrans was being billed for some freeway lights at the higher rate assigned for sign lighting. In most cases, she said, these were lights mounted on signs but functioning as freeway lamps. For those lights, Kosek said, Caltrans was billed at the sign-lighting rate of 12 cents per kilowatt hour, instead of the street-lighting rate of five cents.

“That didn’t seem reasonable,” she said.

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Kosek’s arguments to Edison were supported by the Garden Grove Citizens Lighting Committee, an ad hoc group whose previous investigations helped uncover major electricity over-billings in Garden Grove, Orange and Westminster, and resulted in claims for refunds of more than $385,000. They also had stumbled on similar problems with Caltrans lights that went through some of those cities.

Eventually, Edison agreed to change its rate categories to bill the sign lights at the lower rate.

“We believe it’s a fair rate,” Maharg said. “I think that, historically, we have always tried to work with our customers in resolving these problems.”

Caltrans is still identifying which lights qualify, a process expected to be completed by early next year.

Ultimately, Kosek said, the change should save the transportation department about $50,000 a year in Orange County alone, but other districts stand to benefit as well.

“We’re looking at this as a statewide process,” said Manderscheid, who recently helped establish a committee of Edison representatives and Caltrans officials from throughout Southern California.

“We want to streamline the whole process and make sure that these problems don’t happen again,” Manderscheid said.

One committee member is Kosek, who says that she feels a great deal of satisfaction at having helped save taxpayers so much money.

“It makes me feel pretty wonderful,” she said.

Recently, Caltrans supervisors recognized her efforts with $250 in bonuses.

“Every once in a while, when they give me a bad time,” she said, “I mention it.”