Senator seeking PURA nomination owns business probed by PURA

An enforcement arm of the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority began looking into a company owned by state Sen. John Fonfara, D-Hartford, late last year to determine whether it was illegally operating as an unlicensed business on Connecticut’s third-party electric marketplace.

That inquiry — which has not been previously tied to the longtime lawmaker — is the latest twist in a drama surrounding Fonfara’s personal financial ties to several energy-related companies as he seeks Gov. Ned Lamont's nomination to a seat on the utility regulatory board.

While PURA hasn't accused Fonfara and his company of wrongdoing, the inquiry highlights the potential ethical entanglements he could face as a regulator.

Lamont’s office announced plans last month to nominate Fonfara to one of two open seats on PURA’s board as part of a deal with lawmakers to advance his reappointment of the authority’s current chairwoman, Marissa Gillett. 

That deal hit a bump last week after reporting revealed that Fonfara previously was involved with another business that racked up more than $1 million in fines from PURA. On Monday, Lamont told reporters that Fonfara would need further vetting but did not back off his plans to nominate the lawmaker.

“We need to go through the background check and vetting and everything that goes with that. We need to see more to know more,” Lamont spokesman Rob Blanchard said Wednesday when asked about the latest inquiry.

“We certainly hope that these issues are resolved,” he added. 

The company at the center of the inquiry, My Supply Manager LLC, advertises a service to “continuously monitor” Connecticut’s electricity market and automatically switch power customers to a new supplier whenever a better rate is available.

The cost of that service ranges between $19.95 and $49.95 a year depending on the customer’s usage, according to the company’s website.

Unlike people in states with fully regulated electricity markets, customers in Connecticut are able to shop and compare rates from different suppliers while having the electricity delivered through the traditional power utilities, Eversource and United Illuminating.

Fonfara told The Connecticut Mirror that the vast majority of electric customers are overpaying by not utilizing third-party suppliers, and he said his company simply helps those people find the best deals on the supply portion of their bills using publicly available data.

My Supply Manager was officially formed in December 2023 by Fonfara, several months after another one of his businesses, Wattifi Inc., folded amid a dispute with PURA over fees it was ordered to pay the utilities to cover its share of the costs to design a new format for customers' bills.

Fonfara, who has served in the General Assembly since the 1980s and previously led the legislature’s Energy and Technology Committee, did not seek a license for his new company with PURA, which oversees the state’s third-party electric markets.

In an interview late Wednesday, the senator insisted his company’s work fell outside of the scope of PURA’s regulations and licensing requirements because it did not contract or work directly with third-party energy suppliers.

"All of my customers, I serve individually," Fonfara said, adding that he has a "small but growing" base of fewer than 1,000 customers.

"I'm not a supplier, I'm not a broker, I'm not an aggregator ... My sole compensation is from my customers, never from anyone else," he said. "Anybody who says I'm an aggregator, it's false."

Fonfara added that he was not aware of the inquiry into his company and had not been contacted by PURA about his business practices.

But emails obtained by the CT Mirror show that Fonfara was warned last year that he was potentially violating the rules for so-called electric aggregators, which represent utility customers and negotiate contracts with suppliers on those customers' behalf. 

Staff with the Office of Consumer Counsel, which serves as an advocate for utility customers in Connecticut, told Fonfara in September 2024 that the business model for My Supply Manager likely qualified the company as an electric aggregator. As such, the office recommended he apply for a license with PURA, according to emails provided under a Freedom of Information Act request.

"I believe under current CT regulations your company is acting as an aggregator," an agency staffer wrote to Fonfara in an email. "I know you have a splash page that says you aren’t a supplier or broker but in CT brokers are not an allowed or defined entity, you either have to be a supplier or aggregator."

Fonfara, who was seeking information from the Consumer Counsel at the time, quickly pushed back on that recommendation and sent a reply asking the office to point him to the law or regulation that would require him to register his company with PURA. 

The staffer for the Office of Consumer Counsel responded by pointing to several previous rulings by PURA. They said those rulings determined that any company acting on behalf of customers during the purchase of electricity was an aggregator.

Around the same time that OCC was advising Fonfara to apply for a license, officials at PURA also began to question whether the company was skirting the law. 

Theresa Govert, the chief of staff for PURA, confirmed on Wednesday that a branch of the agency known as the Office of Education, Outreach and Enforcement sent out questions to third-party electric suppliers in September 2024 asking whether any of the companies had done business with or received orders from My Supply Manager. 

The office also sought information from the suppliers as to whether My Supply Manager was operating under a license for electric aggregators.

Over a dozen third-party electric suppliers eventually responded to questions that were sent out by Thomas Lopez, the director of the Office of Education, Outreach and Enforcement. All of them said they had no record of doing business with My Supply Manager. They also told Lopez that they were unaware of whether the company had a license to serve as an electric aggregator.

Fonfara said Wednesday that the suppliers' responses offered further evidence his company was not operating on the PURA-regulated marketplace. "If anybody said they did business with me, it'd be untrue," Fonfara said. "It is untrue."

The Office of Education, Outreach and Enforcement is an independent wing of PURA that is empowered to receive complaints from ratepayers and conduct investigations.

The staff in that office is “firewalled” from the PURA commissioners, Govert said, but if they believe a company is violating the state’s laws and regulations, they can petition utility commissioners and ask that enforcement actions be taken against that business.

As of this week, the office had yet to request any action be taken against My Supply Manager, Govert said. 

In addition to My Supply Manager, Fonfara owns or has had an interest in a string of other businesses that work with electric markets and other energy projects, according to his statements of financial interest and business records available through the Secretary of the State’s Office. 

In late 2023, he registered two other businesses under the names “WeSearch Energy” and “Supply Manager.” Both of those were alternative names for the operation that became My Supply Manager, Fonfara said, and are no longer operating entities. 

Between 2018 and 2023, he was listed as the chief executive officer at Wattifi, according to filings with the Secretary of the State’s Office.

Wattifi was a third-party supplier licensed by PURA to operate on Connecticut’s deregulated electric supply market. Last week, CT Insider reported that the company had previously been cited by PURA for charging variable rates and failing to maintain enough renewable energy credits in its portfolio. Prior to its dissolution, the company was assessed more than $1 million in late fees for failing to pay money owed to the utilities.

Speaking to reporters, Fonfara has argued that the company was unfairly ordered to pay that money as part of a bill redesign effort that it did not plan on taking part in as the company was already in the process of shutting down. He also said he was unaware of the accrued late fees until last week. 

Fonfara also owns Capitol Sign LLC, a former billboard company that the senator said has since branched into other business ventures, including consulting for DBS Energy, a business involved in solar work regulated by PURA. The president of DBS Energy, Erik Bartone, is Fonfara’s former business partner at Wattifi, and the company lists the same address in Cromwell as My Supply Manager in its filings with the Secretary of the State’s Office.

He also listed an interest in a real estate firm called Servistar LLC, which he told the CT Mirror was involved in an “out-of-state business interest” not subject to oversight by PURA. Multiple press reports have identified the company as the developer behind a proposed multibillion-dollar data center project in Westfield, Mass. 

Itai Vardi, a researcher for the Energy and Policy Institute, a group that markets itself as a utility watchdog group, said that Fonfara’s web of business interests — as well as his conflicts with regulators — are enough to raise concerns about his qualifications to serve on the authority. 

“It’s clear that he does work in the electric supplier space,” Vardi said. “That’s a clear conflict for him.” 

Fonfara, however, has argued that experience on the Energy and Technology Committee and as a business owner makes him well-suited for the role.

In a statement issued through a spokesman Wednesday morning, Fonfara said if he is appointed to PURA, he “will work to lower electricity costs to improve household affordability and business competitiveness.” 

“I will undertake this as my sole professional responsibility without conflict of any kind, including any direct or indirect relationship with any organization whose business is among those regulated by PURA,” he added, specifying that meant he intended to divest from My Supply Manager. 

“I will retain no interest in any entity engaged in the areas overseen by PURA, whether they be regulated by PURA or not,” he said.