MD Democrats Double Down on Misleading Utility Bill Graphic

By: Adam Reuter

Yesterday, The Baltimore Informer issued a hard 5:00 PM deadline to the Maryland Democratic Party. We demanded they remove a blatantly misleading graphic from their official Facebook page and issue an apology to Maryland ratepayers. The deadline came and went. As of Monday evening, the post remains active.

It’s clear the state party prefers scoring cheap political points over telling the truth.

The graphic in question, posted on March 20, cites a March 2026 Joint Economic Committee report. The numbers check out: Maryland families are indeed facing an 11.6% average spike in electricity bills, which equals about $230 a year. But the MD Dems pin the blame for this massive hit entirely on federal economic policies.

That narrative is a smokescreen. It’s designed to distract you from the decades of local grid mismanagement, legislative sabotage and unchecked corporate greed happening right here in our backyard.

If you want to know why your BGE bill is suffocating your wallet, look at the actual culprits the political establishment refuses to name.

The PJM Auction Disaster and the RMR Double-Charge

The biggest driver of the recent supply cost spike has absolutely nothing to do with the Oval Office. It stems from a massive bureaucratic fuck-up in the regional capacity market auction run by PJM Interconnection.

To understand how PJM financially crippled Baltimore families, you have to understand how they buy power. Think of the electrical grid like a fire department. You don’t just pay firefighters when a building is burning; you pay them a standby fee so they are ready the second you need them. PJM runs a “capacity auction” every year to set that standby price.

In 2023, Talen Energy announced they were retiring the Brandon Shores and Wagner power plants by June 2025. PJM panicked. They realized that without those plants, the transmission lines couldn’t handle the load and Baltimore would face catastrophic blackouts. So, PJM forced a Reliability Must-Run (RMR) contract. It’s essentially a federally approved “please don’t quit” bribe. Ratepayers are now paying Talen hundreds of millions of dollars in out-of-market fees to keep those plants open until 2029.

Here’s where PJM’s internal rulebook screwed us. When PJM ran their July 2024 capacity auction, their rules explicitly stated that any plant operating under an RMR contract could not be counted in the auction.

Even though Brandon Shores and Wagner were legally locked into producing roughly 2,000 Megawatts of power for Baltimore, PJM threw a tarp over them and pretended that power didn’t exist when doing the math. Because PJM artificially hid that massive chunk of supply, the auction formula panicked. It registered a severe, manufactured shortage of power, causing the clearing price in our zone to skyrocket by an insane 800%.

Maryland ratepayers got double-charged. We were forced to pay the massive RMR premium directly to Talen to keep the plants open, and we were simultaneously hit with a roughly $5 billion regional price spike because PJM’s auction algorithm pretended those exact same plants were closed.

The SB-1 Monopoly Trap

The MD Dems also conveniently leave out their own legislative sabotage. In 2024, the Democrat-controlled General Assembly passed Senate Bill 1 (SB-1). Marketed as consumer protection, it actually destroyed the competitive energy market and trapped you with your utility company.

To understand how SB-1 screwed us, think of the electrical grid like a town with only one giant grocery store — Exelon/BGE. Because they were the only store, they could charge whatever they wanted for apples. Decades ago, Maryland allowed independent farmers — retail energy suppliers — to set up fruit stands. You could shop around, lock in a cheaper price for your apples and avoid the big store.

Then the politicians passed SB-1. The new law forced these independent suppliers to jump through impossible hoops. It mandated that suppliers couldn’t charge more than the giant grocery store’s historical average. It also stripped away financial safety nets like the purchase of receivables, forcing the independent suppliers to take on massive non-payment risks. The state made it mathematically impossible for these businesses to earn money.

The regulations were so burdensome that the independent suppliers packed up and fled the state. Competitive energy offers on the Maryland choice website plummeted from nearly 300 to absolutely zero.

If you had a locked-in low rate with an independent supplier, SB-1 forced you off that contract and dumped you right back onto BGE’s Standard Offer Service. So right when PJM’s auction disaster caused BGE’s rates to skyrocket, the state ripped away your only escape route. They forced a total monopoly right when you needed competition the most.

The Calvert Cliffs Failure and Data Center Drain

Decades ago, state leaders abandoned the proposed third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs. They completely failed to secure our independent power grid. As Maryland’s population exploded and massive data centers set up shop in our region, the demand for power skyrocketed. The grid buckled under the weight of these server farms, driving up auction prices by an estimated $9.3 billion. We needed infrastructure accommodations and our leaders delivered nothing.

Unchecked BGE Rate Hikes

While the supply costs surge, the delivery costs are also skyrocketing. Exelon/BGE continues to march into the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) to demand distribution rate increases and the PSC rubber-stamps them. BGE’s base gas distribution rates have tripled and electric distribution rates have nearly doubled since 2012. The utility continues to earn money hand over fist on the backs of working families while their infrastructure projects consistently run over budget.

The Maryland Democrats want you looking at Washington, D.C. so you don’t look at Annapolis, Baltimore and the boardrooms of utility monopolies. The 11.6% spike is real. The pain working families feel is real. But blaming the executive branch for local failures does a profound disservice to the public.

The Baltimore Informer gave the party a chance to correct the record. They chose silence. We will keep turning over the rocks they want left alone.