A light fixture lies on the counter at Global Green Lighting.
EPB officials said again Wednesday that an independent audit - which the city-owned utility has declined for months to make public - supports its position that over- and underbilling in the city's streetlight program essentially cancel each other out.
On Tuesday, City Auditor Stan Sewell told City Council members that a firm EPB hired, Mauldin & Jenkins, found $1.5 million in overcharges for energy costs, more even than the $1.2 million Sewell found in his review.
Sewell also said during a council committee meeting that his audit didn't support EPB's position that any overcharges to taxpayers from older, high-wattage lights no longer on the poles were balanced out by underbilling elsewhere.
On Wednesday, EPB President and CEO Harold DePriest released a "clarifying statement" to media saying that "when all the facts are taken into account, the financial difference is close to a wash."
J.Ed Marston, EPB's marketing vice president, told the Times Free Press the statement was prompted by calls asking whether EPB had admitted it owed the city $1.2 million.
In his statement, DePriest said, "EPB has never said that we owe the city $1.2 million," and added the "complicated issue has been oversimplified in some reports."
The dispute traces its roots back to EPB's billing and record-keeping systems, which caused the utility to erroneously charge city taxpayers to power thousands of lights that had long since been removed from poles or replaced with newer, more efficient lights.
Asked at Tuesday's meeting why he believes the over- and undercharges balanced out, DePriest said:
"I still think they do, but what we were looking at at the time, and what we were trying to understand and we thought we understood, was how the process works. ... But in the end we discovered we had some process errors, where somehow we were getting lights changed out that were never going through the system. If it had gone through it correctly, we would have corrected both the energy and the lights, but that wasn't happening. ..."
DePriest said EPB's process was so error-ridden that officials couldn't determine how many lights were being replaced.
"If the process had worked the way it was designed then what I said would exactly be the case, but when we looked into it we found we had some errors with the process and that just happens over the years as you computerize things and people change jobs."
DePriest said in the statement Wednesday that "a careful review by Mauldin & Jenkins" found that when all issues are factored together the costs to the city are nearly even.
Asked Wednesday whether EPB would make the Mauldin & Jenkins audit public, Marston said it hasn't been finalized.
Contact staff writer Joy Lukachick Smith at 423-757-6659 or jsmith@timesfreepress.com.