According to a presentation made at City Council, the recently enhanced City Utilities Regulatory Office has managed to save the city $1.2 million this year by performing functions that had been outsourced to two consulting firms who typically bill $600 an hour for their services.
The two major utility consultants, Dentons and Legend Consulting Group, have contracts that allow them to bill up to a combined $5.6 million. But prior to the new accountability measures, the City Council was routinely forced to pass contract amendments that allowed the consultants to exceed the contract cap. The City Council didn’t have to do that this year.
“I just think that’s really amazing,” Moreno said. “We together worked long and hard trying to figure out what were the best protocols to put in place so that we really had increased oversight on the spending on our outside consultants. And because of this increased oversight and monitoring, we’ve been able to save ratepayers over a million dollars.”
That "ratepayers" thing threw me for a sec. So I had to go look back at the notes from last year where we saw in prior reporting that "most of the consulting costs" are passed on to Entergy ratepayers.
Those contracts are far and away the most lucrative awarded by the council, adding up to nearly $7 million a year. Most of those costs are paid by Entergy, but they’re ultimately passed on to ratepayers through their utility bills. Some observers question how such a prized gig could remain locked down by the same people and firms for so long.
But given the pass-through nature of the savings, it's still an open question as to whether this is going to have much of an effect on your light bill this year. Most of us were expecting to see at least a $1.50 increase as of last month.
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