AUGUSTA – Democratic Rep. Herbert Clark of Millinocket thought he had a good idea to help people save money on electricity and telephone rates. He proposed a bill to cap rate increases at 3 percent annually.

Clark said he believed the 3-percent cap seemed like a fair number, although he admitted it “was just a figure that was pulled out of a hat.”

If only it were that simple.

What Clark and members of the Legislature’s Utilities and Energy Committee found out Tuesday was that most of the recent telephone and electricity rate increases have been less than 3 percent.

What Clark also found out is that in past situations when increases were higher than 3 percent, most of those hikes were attributable to legislatively mandated changes in conservation, low-income energy assistance programs, and electric-industry restructuring.

Plus, Clark was told that sometimes consumers dictate the higher prices. According to utilities and telecommunications industry lobbyists who spoke in opposition to the bill, consumers want the latest in Internet capabilities, the most reliable power grid especially in the winter, and the fastest telephone connections with all of the gizmos such as call-waiting, caller ID and others.

Those cost money to put in place, the lobbyists said.

What Clark said he wanted was for the Legislature to send a “can you hear me now” message to the Maine Public Utilities Commission that it take into consideration who has to pay the higher rates – the customers – when it takes up rate-increase requests.

“I just want to make sure people are getting a fair shake for their fair dollar,” said Clark, a former member of the Utilities and Energy Committee. “I sometimes wonder with deregulation we did a few years ago if that was the right thing to do.”

Currently electricity users pay between 14 cents and 16 cents per kilowatt-hour, rates that when adjusted for inflation are about the same as they were in 1999 and early 2000 before the electric industry was restructured to allow for market competition and the potential lower prices.

The rates were lower for about three years before going up again March 1. High oil and natural gas prices – two key energy components for producing electricity at some power plants – forced the recent power rate increases.

Stephen Ward, the state’s public advocate, called himself a “reluctant opponent” of Clark’s bill. He said he wishes rate increases could be outlawed.

But putting a cap on rates could be unconstitutional, Ward said. If utilities are unable to recover the costs of implementing costly state-required programs because of a rate cap, the situation could be construed as a governmental taking of property.