By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive
The PJM Interconnection has until the end of September to agree to governance and stakeholder reforms or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will impose them, the agency’s chairman, Laura Swett, said Thursday.
“PJM is facing a grave legitimacy crisis,” Swett said at a technical conference FERC held on the grid operator’s governance issues. “Some transmission owners are openly discussing leaving the RTO altogether. Put plainly, market participants have lost confidence in PJM’s decision-making abilities.”
With PJM failing to attract significant new generation in its last two capacity auctions, the grid operator is ready for major changes in the way it operates, according to its new President and CEO David Mills, who officially took over the role in May after several months as interim leader.
“We are fully committed to rise to the challenge,” including capacity market reform, Mills said.
Potential reforms discussed at the meeting include increased board independence, a formal role for states at PJM, and giving states the right to file proposals at FERC — called “filing rights” — while also expanding PJM’s filing rights.
After taking post-conference comments, FERC intends to hold a dispute resolution forum in September with PJM stakeholders to develop a governance reform package, according to Swett. If an agreement isn’t reached by the end of that month, FERC will impose its own reforms on PJM, she said.
Capacity market exposes governance weaknessesThe technical conference comes about two years after capacity prices spiked in PJM as rising demand from data centers outpaced any increase in power supplies on PJM’s system, which spans 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states and the District of Columbia. That price spike led to rate increases of 20% or more for some utilities and sparked intense interest from governors and policymakers.
PJM’s struggles in responding to the rapid shift in its supply-demand balance intensified governance problems that had been festering for years, Jodi Moskowitz, PSEG’s vice president regulatory — law, deputy general counsel and RTO strategy officer, said at the meeting.
Two problems highlighted at the meeting were the ability of PJM members to effectively fire the grid operator’s board members as well as its stakeholder process, which can be long and end without concrete results.
PJM uses a sector-weighted voting system in its stakeholder process, with a two-thirds majority of a sector-weighted vote required for a measure to pass. Under the system, members are divided into five categories — electric distributor, end-use customer, generation owner, other supplier and transmission owner.
One effect of the voting system is that two sectors can join up to block a measure they don’t like, which has happened repeatedly, especially on contentious issues, the RTO Governance Research Network said in comments filed at FERC.
During the meeting, representatives for American Electric Power and others said stakeholders should have an advisory role, like the one used by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. Under that process, PJM’s board would get input from stakeholders, but final decisions would rest with the board.
Currently PJM members run the grid operator’s stakeholder process, which can lead to priorities getting offtrack, according to Asim Haque, PJM executive vice president, governmental and member services.
PJM’s failure to use authorities that it has and its failure to engage with states reflects the organization’s culture, according to FERC Commissioner David LaCerte.
“This is a cultural quagmire that they’ve developed by eroding the board in the past and creating this fear of [board members] being terminated to where they’re not using their authorities,” LaCerte said “They’re not engaging with the states because they don’t want to get out of line with what the stakeholders want.”
The solution appears to be making the stakeholder process advisory, LaCerte said.
“I don’t think we can do business as usual,” Haque said.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 14:20Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,
The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued Colorado on Thursday over state regulations that provide in-state tuition and financial aid to illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigrants from Nicaragua, Ecuador and other nationalities at a door on the border wall waiting to be picked up by the U.S. Border Patrol in El Paso, Texas, on Jan. 4, 2023. Paul Ratje/ReutersThe July 23 lawsuit, filed with the District Court for the District of Colorado, accused Colorado of ignoring Title 8 of the U.S. Code Section 1623, which bans illegal immigrants from being eligible for post-secondary education benefits in a state unless the same benefits are provided to all U.S. citizens, irrespective of their state of residence.
Colorado's Advancing Students for a Stronger Tomorrow Act, initially passed in 2013 and amended in 2019 and 2022, allows illegal immigrant students living in the state to access in-state tuition and financial aid.
In-state tuition benefits are granted to eligible students when applying to Colorado public universities or community colleges, whereas out-of-state U.S. citizens are required to pay higher tuition rates at these institutions.
"These statutes constitute blatant unequal treatment favoring illegal aliens over U.S. citizens. Worse, such preferential treatment is squarely prohibited and preempted by Congress," the lawsuit said.
According to a fact sheet from the Colorado Department of Higher Education, the Act removed several barriers that had prevented thousands of illegal immigrant high school students from qualifying for in-state tuition and financial benefits.
The 2022 revision of the Act reduced the time an illegal immigrant student needed to attend high school to obtain these benefits from at least three years to just one year.
Under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, extending eligibility for post-secondary education benefits to illegal immigrants is "unconstitutional," the lawsuit said. Several courts have struck down similar in-state tuition laws as unconstitutional.
For instance, earlier this month, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a case filed by the Trump administration that Texas cannot offer in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants under its Dream Act, ruling that federal law overrides state policy.
In the Colorado lawsuit, the DOJ asked the court to enter a judgment declaring that the state's Advancing Students for a Stronger Tomorrow Act violates the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause. It asked the court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the defendants from enforcing the Act or any similar statute.
Defendants in the lawsuit include the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, the Colorado Department of Higher Education, and its executive director.
In a July 23 statement, the DOJ said that the lawsuit against Colorado was the 14th case filed by the department challenging in-state tuition policies for illegal immigrants.
"By granting illegal aliens in-state tuition, Colorado is violating federal law and subsidizing education for illegal aliens at the taxpayers' expense," Associate Attorney General Stanley E. Woodward, Jr. said in the statement.
"This Department will not cease until President [Donald] Trump's promise is fulfilled: illegal aliens will not receive benefits denied to our Nation's own citizens."
The Epoch Times reached out to the Colorado governor and the Colorado Department of Higher Education for comments, but did not receive a response by publication time.
In addition to Texas, the Trump administration has succeeded in getting permanent injunctions against in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants in Kentucky, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.
Cases filed against California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Kansas, and Minnesota are pending.
Meanwhile, the DOJ announced in a July 24 statement that the District Court for the Southern District of Illinois ruled in favor of the federal government in a lawsuit against Illinois's in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants.
The case was filed in September 2025, with the state subsequently filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The DOJ said that Illinois chose to give preferential treatment to illegal immigrants while not extending that treatment to Americans outside Illinois.
"This ruling enforces the statute Congress wrote and stops the State from putting illegal aliens ahead of American citizens," U.S. Attorney Steven D. Weinhoeft said in the statement.
In a July 23 fact sheet update, the National Immigration Law Center stated that adoption of "tuition equity" laws and policies across various states suggests that such actions help both U.S. citizens and immigrants of all statuses by reducing high school dropout rates and increasing the number of students pursuing college degrees.
Tyler Durden Tue, 07/28/2026 - 13:40