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Cleveland Public Power officials found themselves on the hot seat during City Council's Finance Committee Monday, when Councilman Jeffrey Johnson demanded to know why the utility considers charges on customers' bills to be "trade secrets."

(Lynn Ischay, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland City Councilman Jeffrey Johnson on Monday challenged Cleveland Public Power's assertion that the calculation of customers' bills constitutes a "trade secret" that could give the city-owned utility's competitors an unfair advantage in the marketplace if revealed to the public.

In reaction to a story on cleveland.com laying out the utility's refusal to turn over records, Johnson called for a legal opinion on the matter from the city's law department.

"I don't agree with (withholding the information)," Johnson said during a City Council Finance Committee meeting. "But the process is for the law department to review this finding. And I don't want to wait six months for it. My folks are paying these bills every month."

CPP recently denied a cleveland.com public records request for a breakdown of the utility's so-called "energy adjustment charge" -- a fee tacked on to customers' bills intended to account for monthly fluctuations in the cost of buying power. A CPP spokesman, in refusing the request, cited a state law that protects companies from divulging "trade secrets."

When Johnson asked Public Utilities Director Robert Davis at the finance committee table to explain how that law applies to customers' bills, Davis read from his smartphone a prepared statement, reiterating the city's argument.

A city ordinance allows the utility to impose the "energy adjustment charge" upon customers to account for fluctuations in power costs, according to a prescribed calculation.

Cleveland.com sought to examine the charge more closely after the city's former director of public utilities, Paul Bender, accused CPP of improperly using the energy adjustment charge for years to obscure $128 million in tacked on fees. According to Bender, CPP Commissioner Ivan Henderson and his predecessors had folded into the EAC unrelated costs for landscaping, tree trimming, car parts, ice and snow removal, laser print cartridges, paints and labor.

Henderson justified the expenses by evoking an ordinance passed in 1975 that allows the utility to charge customers an "environmental or ecological adjustment" for "special apparatus and equipment required for compliance with federal, state or city environmental protection laws and directives."

Bender, who left the city in September 2014, argued that the expenses are part of the daily operating cost of the utility and should be covered by the base rate paid by customers.

That issue is the subject of a class-action lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.