Trumbull County repaid for $260,000 Ohio Edison error

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The county had previously been overbilled $15,709 for the Wean Building.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

WARREN — For the second time in a year, Trumbull County officials have learned that a computer glitch caused Ohio Edison to overbill the county for electrical use — this time to the tune of $260,000 over four years.

Rebilling statements Ohio Edison gave to county commissioners Tuesday said the county had paid roughly five times as much for electricity in the county-owned Stone Building at the corner of High Street and Park Avenue as it should have — $316,526 instead of $60,507.

Trumbull County Commissioner Frank Fuda said he gives credit to Ohio Edison for finding the mistake and correcting it. Fuda said, however, that the county's accounts payable secretary, Vickie Housel, actually questioned the bills in May and that prompted the company to review the bills.

Housel said an Ohio Edison official came to the county administration building in person Tuesday to give the county checks for $130,931 and $129,084. The two refunds are for two of the three meters that count electrical usage in the Stone Building.

Fuda said his understanding is that a new computer system that was put into place in May 2003 did not work properly with the meters. The result was that payments being made to Ohio Edison were not being credited to the account, and were rebilled each month.

No apparent problem

Housel said it was not apparent that something was wrong with the bill amounts during her 15 months in her position because the bills were rising and falling each month with different usage amounts, as would be expected, and there was no large single-month jump in cost.

She did question the bills in April, however, because of a change Ohio Edison made in the meters that showed up on the bills.

The rebilling statements showed that the number of kilowatt hours of electricity used in the two buildings increased from 7,912 in June 2003 to 11,442 in April 2007, but the cost of the electricity increased from $2,918 to $8,587 during that same time period.

Ohio Edison paid the county $6,910 in interest on the overpaid money.

LuAnn Koch, Ohio Edison area manager for Trumbull County, said the Stone Building had an uncommon type of meter used only by large electrical customers, not smaller users such as residences. She said Ohio Edison has checked all of the meters the county uses and is certain that no other similar problems exist.

Koch said she believes all of the business customers who had similar meters — known as accumulating, three-phase, self contained meters — discovered the error earlier, and it was corrected.

Past overbilling

In August 2006, Trumbull County's chief building official at the time, David Zofko, was looking at utility costs for the county-owned Wean Building on North Park Avenue and discovered that Ohio Edison had overbilled.

Ohio Edison agreed to refund the county $25,727 for the mistake, which Zofko said had occurred in 2004 when a meter reader entered the wrong information into a new handheld computer he was using.

While looking at electric bills from 2004 and 2005, Zofko noticed that the Wean Building's electric bill for January 2005 was $20,804, which was $15,385 more than the previous month's bill of $5,419. The problem, Zofko learned, was that a meter reader had keyed in a kilowattt-demand amount of 1,680, when he meant to key in 168.

Ohio Edison's computers identified the mistake about a year later and credited the county $15,709, Zofko said. When Zofko questioned Ohio Edison further, the company discovered that it had also overcharged the county $10,018, Zofko said.

Zofko left the county in May after he was appointed director of the Ohio Manufactured Homes Commission in Columbus.

runyan@vindy.com

Thursday, July 26, 2007