Web posted Friday, April 6, 2001

Like rates, late gas bill payments continue to rise

WICHITA -- More than one out of 10 Kansas Gas Service customers are behind on paying their gas bills.

About 60,000 households either are in arrears or are paying off their bills on a mandatory installment plan, according to Kansas Gas figures released.

Kansas Gas Service is the state's largest gas provider, with 630,000 customers. There are 23,731 customers behind 60 days or more with an average debt of $560.

Last year, there were 14,121 customers with past-due bills at an average bill of $243, the company said.

"The vast majority were able to pay their bills on time. It was that some people had a harder time this year paying their bills," said Kansas Gas Service spokesman Steve Johnson.

The average residential heating bill for November through February was $566, compared to $298 for the same four-month period last year.

Together, those customers owe more than $20 million -- up from about $4.4 million owed last year.

The figures are surprising and scary, said Deborah Abner, coordinator of the Salvation Army's Heatshare utility-assistance program.

"It means we have a whole brand new group of people who are going to be needing help," Abner said.

Johnson said it's a concern for the company as well.

Kansas Gas only gets paid to deliver gas, the cost of the gas itself is passed straight through to customers at the price the company paid.

And Kansas Gas doesn't want to shut off honest customers who simply are struggling to pay gas prices that were double the previous winter's, he said.

"We're happy to work with our customers to help them set up a payment plan," he said.

The Kansas Gas debt numbers emerged as the Kansas Corporation Commission held its third day of hearings on how to spend about $37 million coming to Kansas from recently settled federal litigation.

The source of the money is a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruling that pipeline companies improperly passed their property-tax costs on to local gas companies and customers in the mid-1980s.

The commission's task is to decide how to divide the proceeds owed to customers of three gas companies -- Kansas Gas, Greeley Gas in the Kansas City area, and UtiliCorp United.

The state Legislature unanimously urged the KCC to allocate as much of the refund money as possible to help families that are too poor to afford hundreds of dollars in extra gas costs from last winter, but too rich to qualify for existing utility-assistance programs.

The Legislature's proposal calls for paying half of last winter's gas costs for households with annual incomes between 130 percent and 300 percent of the federal poverty line. By that standard, a family of four making up to $51,000 could qualify, officials said.

Glenn Smith, a consultant who testified for the KCC staff, said that about 170,000 gas customers statewide would be eligible for about $30 million in rebates.

But, he added, he would expect only about half the eligible customers to apply. Some wouldn't know about the program, and others wouldn't have the needed records to show their income or gas costs to qualify, he said.

http://www.morningsun.net/stories/040601/kan_0406010014.shtml

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 06, 2001