Great, the cost of my utilities are going to go up so Joe Six Pack can keep watching his reality TV shows.
As people receive their stimulus checks, they are likely to prioritize bills that cause immediate disruptions to their lives if left unpaid. Cable TV and internet, which can still be cut off, are likely to rank higher on the payment hierarchy than electricity, gas and water.
On the one hand, this newfound lenience puts utilities on better footing with regulators, who are going to give them an easier time when they seek to recover those costs later. Many utilities have built-in mechanisms to recover such costs in the future. Similarly, when a natural disaster damages transmission lines, a utility can ask the state's public-utilities commission to increase the rates it can charge customers in the future to recoup the costs of fixing them. In states including Michigan, public-utilities commissions have told utilities to start recording unpaid bills in a separate account so that they can later be reviewed for recovery.
