That’s left many working class families with utility bills of around $900 a month or more.
A city judge has denied an attempt by Baltimore Gas and Electric to hold former employees and their attorneys in contempt of court for alerting regulators to allegedly falsified pipeline safety records.
BGE has been locked in a rate raising war with customers after its prices have tripled since 2010 for gas, and doubled in the same period for electricity.
Rates in the city for both have spiked between 7% and 9% since January 2025 alone. That’s left many working class families with utility bills of around $900 a month or more.
BGE’s parent company, Exelon, has a market value of $43 billion, which has led advocates and customers to questions why they are footing the bill instead of the business itself.
BGE has said it needs to raise its rates to replace crumbling infrastructure and meet a higher charge for gas and electric from suppliers.
The whistleblower lawsuit focuses on a request by company employees asking the Maryland Public Service Commission to investigate during the utility’s first attempt at raising rates over several years, because of a contractor that they claimed had routinely falsified reports and skipped inspections.
That regulator then launched a probe into BGE and issued a report concluding that the utility had put public safety at risk by not investigating or fixing faulty infrastructure.
“BGE said there were no falsified reports submitted in 2023, contrary to the PSC’s report.
According to the company, the former employee’s disciplinary action in 2023 was taken due to his ‘underperformance in the number of audits BGE verified he conducted,'” the company said in a statement at the time.
BGE pushed back that while there was one falsified report from that contractor, the rest of the whistleblowers claims were false.
It then filed a contempt of court lawsuit against the former employees, who say that was meant as an attempt to intimidate and silence them.
“[The lawsuit] suggests an organization more focused on silencing criticism than addressing legitimate safety concerns,” David Manuel Baña, an attorney for the former workers, said in a statement when the lawsuit was filed. “[BGE] has chosen to maintain a path of intimidation that serves to discourage others from reporting critical safety issues in the future.”
Baña represents the 14 former employees who brought up BGE safety issues and said at the time that they spoke up to keep the public safe and rates fair to consumers.
“They feel that ratepayers shouldn’t be on the hook for work that wasn’t properly inspected,” Baña said.
