The Office of the People’s Counsel has a new website that they are touting as more friendly to the people they rep in utility matters — consumers.

The site gives consumers a list of energy providers with the essentials on their offerings: how much they charge per kilowatt-hour, the length of the contract, fee for canceling and what type of power they provide.

While OPC’s website is a good one-stop shop for consumers looking to compare deals, OPC warns that you should still check with the individual providers and read contract details before signing on with an energy company. Contract terms can change quickly, and you don’t want to get stuck paying for a service that you don’t like.

The site also includes a list of public hearings coming up at the Public Service Commission. I even noticed dates for a taxicab rate hike hearing that I didn’t know was coming up (August 2-4). There’s also a section on the latest news from the PSC. Consumers can see how the commission ruled and where OPC came down in support of customers.

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We all know it’s hot out there. Yesterday my colleague heard about someone baking cookies on the dashboard of their car in D.C.

To keep office life pleasant, companies generally pump up the air conditioning on super-hot days like the sweltering ones we’ve been dealing with this week. That means that businesses, which use the most power anyway, up their consumption during heat waves, causing power plants to run at peak load and putting a strain on the regional power grid.

Recognizing the issue, the folks at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center are doing their part to stop electricity use from skyrocketing on these miserably hot days.

GBMC has already declared five “Code Red” days this summer – June 23 and 25, and July 6, 7 and 8 – where lights that aren’t essential are turned off and the thermostat is turned up a few degrees in non-critical areas of the hospital.

GBMC’s green team started working on reducing the hospital’s peak electrical load in 2009 to reduce its costs and its impact on the environment. Last year, the hospital reduced its load by 700 kilowatts on 11 peak days, saving the hospital about $30,000.

This year’s goal is to reduce consumption by 1,500 kilowatts. Reaching the goal could mean savings of $50,000. GBMC works with South River Consulting, a Baltimore-based energy consulting firm, to keep track of high demand days.

To determine conservation measures, the hospital codes each day depending on the weather. Most days are “green,” meaning that the  hospital will use standard conservation practices like turning off lights in unoccupied rooms, keeping air registers clear, closing blinds to keep rooms cool and shutting computers down at the end of the day.

On “yellow” days, hospital staff is asked to follow green protocol, with a heightened awareness. Staff follows the same steps on “red” days, but they are asked to turn off computers during the day when they are away from their desks.

photo from bakingbites.com

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Every industry has its busy season — for accountants, it’s January through April; same for legislators in Maryland. Likewise, warm-weather months are busy for crabbers and construction crews.

In the restaurant industry, while they may have their busy seasons, there are really three times a year when they hit the cash-flow jackpot — and although we love our dads, Father’s Day isn’t one of them.

I mention this because last week we ran a story on Sir Walter Raleigh Inn, a Maryland restaurant that went through a bankruptcy 15 years ago and is still a successful business. When the owners of the business had to decide when to file for bankruptcy, which requires a lot of cash on hand, they knew they had three opportunities in 1995, and if they missed the holiday blitz, they might not have enough money to do it.

Here’s a little tidbit that didn’t make it into the story of how Jerry Cosker, one of four owners of the business at the time, got his partners to take advantage of the extra holiday cash to file for bankruptcy:

In our business you have three big events from December through May. The first is New Year’s weekend; the second is Valentine’s weekend and the third and the last and the greatest and the best is Mother’s Day. So December came and went with no decisions being made…The end of January, beginning of February came and I said, ‘this is the second train that’s leaving the station. We have a chance to jump on board and make this work, or we’re going to lose this golden opportunity.’ We had a lot of cash. We would get like $75,000 extra just from these busy weekends…

That train left and no decision. April came and I said, ‘this is it; this is the last one,’ because you know Father’s Day doesn’t bring a whole lot, although it’s getting better. They finally decided the third week in April that we had to go find somebody.

Check out the story to see how Jerry and the gang made it through bankruptcy in a very creative way.

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All of our newsmaker sessions at The Daily Record have been great, because they allow us to sit down for extended conversations with some of the state’s biggest names in business, law and politics.

The interviews give us a sense of the people behind the titles.

We’ve sat down with Dick Cass, president of the Ravens; Gov. Martin O’Malley; Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake; Phoebe Haddon, dean of the University of Maryland Law School; and Mayo Shattuck, CEO of Constellation Energy Group, just to name a few.

All of our guests have been great, but last week’s session raised the bar. Newsmaker Mark Fetting, CEO and chairman of Baltimore’s Legg Mason Inc., brought us cookies.

And not just any cookies. Deliciously flaky and airy cookies and sweet and gooey macaroons from a local business, the Roland Park Deli and Bakery. Tucked away on the side of the quaint cedar shake Roland Park shopping center (believed to be the first shopping center in the country), the deli’s desserts are divine.

Fetting said he brings a box of the cookies and macaroons into his office every week. We were told to help ourselves, but to leave some for his staff — otherwise he might get booed out of the office.

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If you’ve followed Maryland health care politics in the last decade, Vinny DeMarco’s name should ring a bell.

He’s the guy who has fought unrelentingly for years to win health care coverage for more Marylanders, not to mention get publicity for his causes, and he’s made some impressive strides. Under DeMarco’s watch, his Health Care For All! Coalition has successfully lobbied to get coverage for 100,000 more Maryland citizens.

Now, DeMarco is the subject of a new book called The DeMarco Factor, written by Michael Pertschuk, former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (the agency that advocates for American consumers), and founder of the Advocacy Institute.

Universal health care has been DeMarco’s most recent crusade — while interviewing him over the phone about the passage of health care reform this spring, our conversation was interrupted several times by passersby congratulating Vinny on the news — but the book tells the story of a guy who has passionately fought many other battles.

From the publisher:

In twenty years of organizing campaigns in Maryland, he has led successful efforts to pass gun control laws (against National Rifle Association opposition), to hike cigarette taxes to prevent youth smoking, and to extend health care to hundreds of thousands of low-income workers. He has also built a unique alliance of mainstream and conservative faith groups, which helped secure rare bipartisan votes in Congress for the enactment in July 2009 of landmark FDA regulation of tobacco manufacture and marketing.

The book promises backroom discussions, and apparently, DeMarco names names. Sounds like a compelling read.

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So you’ve heard of plastic bag bans — or attempts — but now to save the planet, a local chain of organic food stores will stop selling plastic water bottles.

Inspired by the documentary Addicted to Plastic, which showcases the costs and benefits of our love for the influential material, grocer MOM’s Organic Market is reducing its plastic consumption.

Here’s what MOM’s says it is doing to make the change: Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s no secret that banks are having a tough time these days. The FDIC has shut down 73 banks so far this year, and it shuttered 140 in 2009.

Consumers and businesses can get a handle on how their banks are doing by checking in with Weiss Ratings, a company that reviews banks and other businesses. (The company does not take money from the financial institutions it rates and it does not give them a chance to weigh in before it publishes its lists of strong and weak banks).

Here’s how they rate the banks:

Weiss Ratings are assigned by our analysts based on a complex analysis of hundreds of factors that are synthesized into five indexes: capitalization, asset quality, profitability, liquidity and stability. These indexes are then used to arrive at a letter grade rating. A good rating requires consistency across all indexes. A weak score on any one index can result in a low rating, as insolvency can be caused by any one of a number of factors, such as inadequate capital, poor underwriting practices, operating losses, or the failure of an affiliated company.

According to Weiss, 42 Maryland banks and thrifts got a grade of D or worse based on their financial stats last quarter. (D=weak, E=very weak, +=upper third of grade range, -=lower third of grade range).

Regular readers of the newspaper shouldn’t be surprised by most of the banks that earned Es. Aside from HarVest Bank(E+), all of them are under regulatory scrutiny, including Bay National Bank (E-); Colombo Bank (E+); 1st Mariner Bank (E-); and Ideal Federal Savings Bank (E+).

What often gets forgotten are the banks that are doing well. Read the rest of this entry »

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Waiting in the ER for care can be a guessing game.

It could be a relatively painless 20 minutes, or take hours. And, in some cases, the idea of a long wait might keep you from going to the hospital at all.

Now, patients in need of emergency care can tell how long they might sit and wait through a new web program offered by the emergency department at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson. Read the rest of this entry »

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If electric cars are the wave of the future, Genovation Cars just took another step closer to that future.

The Rockville-based designer and builder of environmentally friendly cars has enlisted Tata Technologies, an affiliate of India’s Tata Motors that helped with the creation of the tiny and cheap Nano car, to design and prototype its G2 model, an electric car with a sustainable frame.

The car will include the research that Genovation used to develop its G1 model, which converted Ford Focus cars into electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. The car would be manufactured with green materials — the company is looking into bamboo, flax seed and resin from soybeans — and recycled steel.

Genovation’s eventual goal is to become one of the top providers of electric vehicles in the United States — and make a profit selling around 1,000 cars a year by departing from the Detroit model.

Photo of the G1 from Greencar.com

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Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett is banking on an energy tax hike to help compensate for a $168 million decrease in income tax revenues, part of a much larger $1 billion budget gap.

Leggett wants to double the energy taxes, a plan that would cost some of the area’s larger businesses — think coveted biotechnology firms — hundreds of thousands of dollars more a year. (The move is not unprecedented in trying budget times. Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake also wants to increase energy taxes, but her proposal would cost residential customers an additional 60 cents a month).

The way it sits now, Montgomery’s energy tax falls mostly on the shoulders of businesses, which pay about 2.65 percent more than residential customers. Business customers pay 1.3843 cents per kilowatt of electricity and 11.9214 cents per therm of heating fuel a year, compared to residential customers, who pay a little more than half a cent per kilowatt of electricity and a little less than half a cent per therm of heating fuel.

Leggett had initially planned on seeking a 40 percent energy tax increase, and then bumped it up to 63.7 percent before deciding to ask the County Council to approve doubling the tax. Residents, businesses and the county’s largest power distributor, Pepco, testified against the requested 63.7 percent increase in a hearing last week.

Under that plan, the average residential customer would see an increase in energy tax payments to $161, up from $99 a year; businesses would on average pay $4,157 a year, compared to the $2,618 they pay now. If Leggett gets to double rates, residents would pay $198 a year and businesses would pay $5,236.

According to Maryland Politics Watch, Pepco representative Charles Washington testified applying the 63.7 percent rate hike to the bills of some customers:

As demonstrated below using actual randomly selected commercial accounts, this increase will have a real impact on County businesses. One restaurant in Silver Spring will see an increase of over $3,000 a year. A hotel in Bethesda will see a tax increase of approximately $41,000 a year. The County’s successful Biotech companies will see increases of hundreds of thousands of dollars of year, with at least one projected to see an increase of over half a million dollars.

Under Leggett’s plan, the county would bring in about $192 million in fiscal 2011 from the energy tax to businesses, a lot more than the $88.6 million Washington said Pepco collects in distribution rates from Montgomery County businesses each year.

The rate is far from set. Now Council President Nancy Floreen is saying that the council could tinker with the formula, spreading more cost from businesses to residents.

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