Maybe JCP&L should get the rate hikes it's asking for, but it should really show they're needed, area residents said at a Board of Public Utilities hearing in Morristown Tuesday, according to

.

As

, Jersey Central Power & Light has asked the state for permission to raise homeowners’ rates about 4.5 percent, or more than $53 a year, to recover costs from Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene and other heavy storms.

"You don’t just get it because (the storms) happened," the Daily Record quoted Morris Township Mayor Peter Mancuso saying at one of two hearings held in Morristown Tuesday. "It’s an earning process as well as a learning process, but it’s very, very important for all of us to realize that if there is a mistake made, and I don’t even know if I would categorize it as a mistake, but if something occurs, you don’t automatically have somebody else pick up the burden for it."

Some speakers supported JCP&L, saying it showed a strong response after Sandy. Others were far less impressed.

"I think it is sort of like the captain of the Titanic asking people to pay additional fees to use the lifeboats to be rescued," the Daily Record report quotes Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, saying.

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As reported by the Ledger, JCP&L is seeking to recover $630 million incurred from several large storms. The first public hearings on the issue were held last week in Toms River, and the last set will take place at 1:30 and 6:30 p.m. on April 24, at One Municipal Plaza in Freehold, at Schanck Road and Stillwells Corner Road.

While all New Jersey utilities saw severe outages after Sandy,

. Last year, State Assemblyman Anthony Bucco (R-Morris) told NJ.com a daily call JCP&L held for officials, to communicate its progress after Sandy, was too vague to be useful.

"Everybody appreciates the men and women out there working on these lines and poles," Bucco said. "We know it was a horrific event. What frustrates people — not only people out of power but also elected officials — is not being able to get an answer to simple questions like how long am I going to be in the dark. If you have more information, it's a lot easier to deal with the situation."

A frustrated Mayor Ken Short of Washington Township was blunter in his criticism: "I'm totally fed up by (JCP&L) and their lies and their lack of service," Short said at the time. "All they do is supply power and they can't even do that right."

JCP&L officials have said the damage was so severe after Sandy, providing the sort of granular, street-by-street information many residents wanted wasn't possible, even after the company took steps to improve its public communications systems and methods following Irene. But it has also said it's continued to make improvements to its infrastructure and procedures in the time since.