After nearly five years of stonewalling and lawsuits, PPL and the Public Utility Commission have finally has come clean on what happened after a freak October snowstorm in 2011 when a company executive intervened resulting in his

Tamaqua neighborhood being restored to power four hours earlier than a higher priority neighborhood in Nesquehoning.It's not a pretty story, and it shows that even in multibillion-dollar corporations, stupid decisions make these companies appear to be playing favorites for the benefit of their higher-ups. We are also critical of the PUC, who we feel treated PPL with deference and tried to prevent the disclosure of details in the name of confidentiality.Thanks to an internal and anonymous whistleblower, this sordid episode came to light. If it were not for the courage of this employee, we would still be in the dark, and the company might still be making some of these arbitrary decisions that go against the grain of its own policies.PPL Vice President Dave Boneberger has apologized for his actions that led a repair crew to be redirected to his neighborhood in open violation of company policy. PPL had fought the disclosure of this information all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which came down on the side of a consortium of news organizations, including the Times News. The high court ordered that PPL release investigation records on the utility's response to the storm..The details were laid out in an explicit letter from company President Gregory Dudkin, who explained that Bonenberger had called the utility's storm room to ask about an outage in his neighborhood near Tamaqua. Supervisors interpreted the call as an order to reassign a crew to his area. As a result, the Nesquehoning neighborhood, where the crew was originally working, had to wait an extra four hours to have its power restored.PPL's internal audit faulted Boneberger for using poor judgment and for creating a conflict of interest.We agree with this finding. Top officials of companies have no business making phone calls that can be interpreted as demanding action on their behalf from lower-eschelon employees. A chastened Bonenberger said he regrets that his actions led to the "misunderstanding.""I especially regret that some of our customers had a longer power outage as a result," he said.In his letter to employees, Dudkin said Boneberger took accountability for the "misunderstanding." Typically, the company restores power to areas with a higher incidence of outages. In this case, however, there were 1,326 customers without power in the Nesquehoning area compared to 226 - including Boneberger - in the Tamaqua area. In praising Boneberger as an excellent employee who has performed well in previous major power outages, Dudkin said that Boneberger did not ask that a crew be reassigned."But supervisors in the storm room thought that was what he meant when he called in to get a status report on his neighborhood," Dudkin said.We find it difficult to understand how Boneberger's innocent inquiry about progress in his neighborhood gets translated into the reassignment of the crew from Nesquehoning. Something doesn't add up.In his brief statement, Boneberger said company employees are known for their dedication and hard work in power restoration.In explaining why PPL fought disclosure of the information, Dudkin said the company decided to work with the Public Utility Commission on a settlement "Because confidentiality was required by our settlement, and because confidentiality is an important component of the commission's investigations, we joined the PUC in defending it when it was challenged in court," he said, "now that the court has ruled, providing the details is the right thing to do."Dudkin said the company has learned from this embarrassment. "Now that this court case is over and the details are released, my hope is that we can move forward with a continued focus on our main objective - improving our service to our customers," Dudkin said in his letter to employees.We would like to add our own postscript: For a company that prides itself in communication and in being a good corporate neighbor, PPL fell abysmally short this time around and came clean only when ordered to do so by the state's highest court.BRUCE FRASSINELLI |

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