City Councilman Antonio Glover received a number of phone calls from his District 13 constituents about their Baltimore Gas and Electric bill in February. During a colder than usual winter, and after gas rates were hiked, their bills were expensive to the point of stress, complaint and worry.
Even he couldn’t afford his recent BGE bills, Glover admitted to BGE representatives who were called for a Legislative Investigations Committee meeting in late February.
As he spoke to a few of the utility company’s leaders, he recalled a phone call that stuck out to him more than others.
“‘Councilman, I’m thinking about committing suicide,’” Glover quoted.
“And it stuck with me for a moment. And I asked the reasons why. The reason was, ‘I just spent my entire life savings to purchase the home. And now I’m getting hit with a BGE bill that was like three times the amount I normally pay,’” he continued.
“I’m asking that you go back and have those conversations with the presidents and your stakeholders, that this may cause Baltimore City residents to be in an uproar, because of BGE bills,” Glover told BGE representatives. “This thing is real.”
At a January meeting, the Board of Estimates, which controls the city’s spending, approved a Department of Public Works plan to increase water and sewage rates by 3 percent and 15 percent respectively beginning Feb. 1. Over the following three years, water rates will increase — and sewer rates will taper down to 9 percent — and stormwater rates will increase 3 percent starting in 2026. The initial hike in sewer rates is due to anticipated expenditures, inflation, and supporting consent decree projects, according to DPW spokesperson Mary Stewart.
As Baltimore residents face the double impact of increased water and sewer rates and astonishingly higher gas bills — all while juggling rising food costs and inflation — they’ve called on city and state officials to find a way to mitigate their expenses.
“We are hearing from Baltimoreans all over our city — and really this region — that these rate increases are going to cause devastation for our people,” City Council President Zeke Cohen said in an interview with the Baltimore Beat. Cohen abstained from the 4-0 Board of Estimates vote, noting that there are a number of uncollected water bills that could be targeted first.
The rate increases were approved despite written and in-person pushback from dozens of city residents and community organization leaders, who all said that this would make the cost of living harder for Baltimoreans.
“Access to clean, potable water is a human right, and Baltimore City residents should not have to choose between buying food and paying for water and sewage bills,” Abigail Ulman, a member of With Us For Us, said at the hearing.
Loraine Arikat, a senior policy analyst for health care union 1199SEIU, added that tax-exempt hospitals and universities that are using tens of millions of dollars in city services aren’t expected to bear the brunt of the new water rates.
“A lot of my neighbors are really struggling to make ends meet,” said Arikat, who lives in District 9. “These water rate hikes [are] an additional burden on making sure people have what they need.”
Nneka Nnamdi, the executive director of the SOS Fund, pointed out that La Cité’s Center\West apartment building in Poppleton owes roughly $750,000 in water bills.
“Why is it that they’re still allowed to collect rent and evict residents in the city when they refuse to pay their half-a-million-dollar water bill?” Nnamdi asked.
Mayor Brandon Scott said during the meeting that the city is making a renewed effort to collect not just from residents, but from commercial accounts. At initial publication time, the city had only collected $56 million out of $133 million from commercial accounts — around 42 percent — out of the $188 million in unpaid commercial and residential water bills since the end of the 2023 fiscal year. DPW later said they had collected $62 million of unpaid commercial bills as of March 11. It’s unclear what percentage of unpaid residential bills have been collected — DPW doesn’t have a water collection program for residents, but Stewart said the agency is “developing regular plans for even more proactive communications with residents.”
The city has only collected $56 million out of $133 million from commercial accounts — around 42 percent — out of the $188 million in unpaid commercial and residential water bills since the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
Baltimore residents’ finances became more stressful when they began to receive alarmingly high BGE bills, with some residents seeing monthly gas bills that are triple their cost in previous years due to the extreme cold and gas rate hikes.
In early February, State Delegate Elizabeth Embry of Baltimore City introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would retool an existing state law, the Strategic Infrastructure Development and Enhancement or STRIDE Act, that allows utility companies to collect money from residents for gas pipe replacement projects.
In its current form, the STRIDE Act allows gas utility companies to launch multiple multimillion dollar projects without taking into account cost-effectiveness, causing consumers to pay significantly for pipe replacement projects through ever-rising delivery rates.
The Ratepayer Protection Act, HB0419, would significantly overhaul the STRIDE law by requiring BGE and other gas utilities to give customers and the Maryland Public Service Commission details on upcoming projects, find cheaper alternatives to fixing aging pipe infrastructure, and ultimately give people the ability to switch to electricity if gas is too expensive.
“It still matters that the people using gas, whether it’s more or less, are not paying more than they should have to,” Embry said in an interview with the Baltimore Beat.
Adding to the chorus of elected officials pushing back on BGE are Maryland Congressional representatives Kweisi Mfume, Sarah Elfreth, and Johnny Olszewski Jr., who sent a letter to the Maryland Public Service Commission and BGE officials on February 28 asking that they rescind the BGE rate increases and halt further scheduled rate hikes. After the March 5 Board of Estimates meeting, Cohen said the City Council would continue pressuring the Public Service Commission to revoke BGE’s multi-year rate plan ahead of the projected electricity rate increase in June.
BGE’s gas delivery rate, which is separate from a consumer’s use of gas, has increased by 50 percent since 2020, and is nearly triple the inflation rate since 2010. As a result, company profits have soared to $485 million in 2023, while consumers are being charged more money that BGE says is going toward updating pipe infrastructure, Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel wrote on its website.
Standing in front of City Hall at a February 4 press conference, Ricarra Jones, political director for health care union 1199SEIU, spoke firmly about the real world impact BGE’s monopoly has on Baltimoreans.
“My members have shared stories of bills that were $250 this time last year, and are well over $500 due to the greed of BGE executives,” Jones said.
“My members have shared stories of bills that were $250 this time last year, and are well over $500 due to the greed of BGE executives.”
Ricarra Jones, political director for health care union 1199SEIU
The late February committee meeting that Councilman Glover spoke at was one of several hearings City Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer announced to investigate the reasoning behind BGE’s rate increases and the impacts on residents. The dates and times of future hearings have not been released.
“When you look at their spending and the decisions that they are making, it is not based on public safety, it’s based off of profits,” Schleifer said before beginning the hearing.
At the Feb. 20 hearing, the committee invited Dawn White, vice president of gas distribution; Charles Washington, vice president of governmental and external affairs; and Mark Case, vice president of regulatory policy and strategy for BGE.
David Lapp, of the Maryland People’s Counsel, joined them to answer questions about the soaring gas rates and to criticize BGE’s monopoly. At times, council members’ tempers flared as they pushed back on BGE’s responses and detailed how their constituents were being affected.
“The general perspective of ‘We don’t care’ is absolutely incorrect. I can tell you that every leader in this organization cares,” White said, which drew head shakes from audience members.
“Your CEO is not here. Your CEO is not here,” Councilwoman Odette Ramos retorted.
In a February 2025 OPC report, the agency wrote that it predicts the average $240 per winter month gas bill will rise to over $400 by 2035, an increase of at least 67 percent. By comparison, neighboring Washington Gas and Columbia Gas customers are expected to see a 32 percent and 47 percent increase respectively.
If you take into account a projected decrease in gas customers who switch to electric, that bill could soar to an 84 percent increase per household, the report said.
This increase would come even as BGE’s infrastructure is continuously weakened by the effects of climate change. After a windstorm on Feb. 16, over 100,000 BGE customers were without power. By Feb. 17, the number dropped to 22,000, with most power restored by the time the hearing started on the 20th.
“That’s just simply not right and doesn’t correspond to the outrageous rates that we’re currently paying,” Schleifer told BGE representatives.
In the public testimony portion, Baltimore residents detailed to council members, BGE executives and OPC their struggles with making ends meet amid increased costs of living, and how the bill increases have worsened those struggles.
Kevin Stanley, a Broadway East resident who is blind, spoke about the difficult decisions he’s had to make recently on limited Social Security and disability incomes.
“We’ve invested money in stadiums here, major developments in this city, and other projects around this city and state, and there’s no reason that Baltimoreans should have the excessive gas and electric rates that they have,” Stanley said.
Alice Wright, an elderly woman who uses a portable oxygen tank to help assist her breathing, told the committee that her high BGE bills means she’s had to choose between heat and oxygen.
“This system seems to be focused on power and money,” Wright said. “Everything is being raised that people need the most, and it’s not fair.”