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STORY: The deregulation of the electric energy sector in 2002 came with promises of better service and lower costs to the consumer. Last week, KPFT news ran a story on the practice of slamming - or rather - the act of changing a customer’s retail electric provider without the notifying the customer of the switch. The news department’s attention was called to this by a tenant claiming to have been slammed by her apartment management company. This week, that tenant - Nia Colburt - received an eviction order. ”Now essentially what has happened was that my monies paid for rent were used to defray electric cost. They were costs from a company that was not my retail electric provider, it was clear that I had not selected this company, and I was back-billed and more than half of my rent was held to defray those electric costs.” Texas State Representative Sylvester Turner has noticed an increase in billing complaints since the enactment of deregulation. ”The problem is real, it is significant, and 6,000 billing complaints and 2,000 slamming complaints since the market opened is not a small, insignificant matter.” During this year’s legislative session, Turner sponsored House Bill 2463 which would have imposed penalties on electric companies involved in slamming. However, the bill never made it out of committee. ”There were some of the members on the committee that were not inclined to vote for it, but not because there was any hostility toward the bills. The lobbyists representing the utility industry was very strong, they had many lobbyists coming and were representing, for example, the companies out of Houston, out of Dallas and other parts of the state who were vehemently opposed to any bill that would provide some meaningful protection to consumers in relation to their electric utility bills, and that was unfortunate. I felt fairly certain that if the bills got out of committee, the regulated industry committee that oversees telecommunications and electric restructuring, that those bills would have passed on the floor of the Texas House. “ Nia Colburt is now working with groups like the Consumers Union and the Fair Housing Coalition to fight the terms of her eviction. Ms. Colburt says that she is not the first person in her apartment complex to receive an eviction notice based on non-payment of electric bills. She emphasizes the need of tenants to understand their rights under the law. ”The most important thing that people can do is to first understand their rights, through the Public Utility Commission. By contacting the Public Utility Commission, you can get information to understand slamming, to understand whether or not you have been slammed, and what your rights are in terms of filing a complaint and that’s exactly what I have done. The other thing is to be aware of charges that are on your lease, to understand your lease contract, and any time there is a problem in terms of payment, and make sure that nay information you give the landlord is in writing.” Last week, the Consumers Union, Texas Ratepayers Organization to Save Energy and the Texas Legal Services Center filed comments with the state’s Public Utility Commission regarding the customer protection rules which are currently under review. Shannon Young and Richard Hanna, KPFT News, Houston. E-mail Shannon Young & Richard Hanna at news@kpft.org & rad@hipweb.net respectively . This story was broadcast on June 27, 2003.