Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R-TX) told Fox News on Wednesday that the Texas residents who have been receiving extravagant energy bills gambled on typically inexpensive variable-rate plans and that Texas may even ban the types of variable plans that resulted in such spikes.
“I saw the story about the high bills. Let me explain that,” Patrick told Fox News host Harris Faulkner. “In Texas, you can choose your energy plan, and most people have a fixed rate. If they had a fixed rate per kilowatt hour, their rates aren’t going up.”
“Their bill may be going up because they used more energy — because they had the heat up when they had the power back — but the people who are getting those big bills are people who gambled on a very very low rate,” added Patrick. The lieutenant governor emphasized that Texans who receive such extravagant bills should “not panic,” and that the government would find out what exactly happened. “But going forward, people need to read fine-print in those kind of bills and we may even end that type of variable plan, because people were surprised,” he said.
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