Republicans, Democrats united in outrage, accountability for CenterPoint power outages

(The Center Square contributor) – Republican and Democratic state senators remain united in their outrage over CenterPoint Energy’s failure to restore power to millions of customers after Hurricane Beryl hit July 8.

Members of a Senate Special Committee on Hurricane and Tropical Storm Preparedness, Recovery, and Electricity convened in a nearly 11-hour hearing on Monday to investigate extensive power failures. They also asked why the largest utility provider in the greater Houston area didn’t appear to implement a range of preventative measures and agreed to take action to hold accountable the multi-billion-dollar company in the next legislative session.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick convened the committee to investigate after millions living in the greater Houston area were without power for up to two weeks in 100-degree weather. The storm killed at least 36 people, including those who died from the heat without access to air conditioning. Several lawmakers read their names saying they mattered and shouldn’t have died because of a power outage.

Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, said the consequences of not having power was due to “human error that could have been prevented and we could have saved the most precious resources of Texas, which is human lives, Texans.”

Miles said they were dealing with a problem “that we shouldn't have to have, and a mistake of this magnitude cost lives. It cost us over 30 lives.” The investigation “should be framed around human lives that were lost,” he said.

Speaking directly to CenterPoint CEO Jason Wells, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said, the company’s executive management “made major mistakes … over years that led us to the situation where we had 2.2 million users out of power … because we had a CAT1 storm."

CenterPoint “blew it,” he continued; ongoing failures “poured gasoline on the problem for millions of people,” its communication with residents “was horrid by any measurement I understand and more importantly so many opportunities were missed years ago to fix this problem.”

Bettencourt also raised concerns about CenterPoint requesting from the PUC to make a nearly 10% profit on its storm recovery efforts, including requesting a rate increase on those who were without power for nearly two weeks, including hundreds of businesses currently suing CenterPoint for alleged negligence, The Center Square reported.

Several lawsuits have been filed against CenterPoint, including by those who were injured or suffered losses alleging the cause was the company’s negligence. Beryl is estimated to have created nearly $32 billion in damages and economic losses nationwide, with billions in damages alone in Texas.

Bettencourt said what he learned “was astonishing, aggravating, … makes my blood boil.”

While state and county emergency management workers, linemen and others “did their job right,” they were having to tell “the biggest multibillion dollar corporation … how to do your job,” he said. “The people that died deserve an answer. The people who had their power off deserve an answer. More importantly, the future of this region is based upon having access to power.”

Houston, the energy capital of the state and country, couldn’t get power back on, Bettencourt said, jeopardizing the city’s reputation. The power outage was “to a large extent avoidable and that's really what I'm upset about.”

At one point, state Sen. Carol Alvaredo, D-Houston, said, “This may be the first time that I make this statement, but I completely 100% agree with everything that my colleague, Mr. Bettencourt, just said. So, CenterPoint, you brought us all together, Republicans and Democrats and everybody here.”

Later on, when questioning Wells, she asked, “Are you planning to go to the PUC to ask for a rate increase?” Wells replied that CenterPoint was.

When another senator asked to repeat the question, Alvarado said, “I asked him if CenterPoint is planning to go before the PUC at the cost of the taxpayers to ask for another rate increase to recoup their cost from this storm.”

Wells replied, “Yes, we are intending to file for recovery the cost of this restoration.”

Alvarado posted a video of the exchange on X, saying, “CenterPoint intends to increase their rates to recoup the cost of recovering from Hurricane Beryl, passing the cost on to the customer. That dog won’t hunt.”