A devastating fire in a Lewiston apartment building last summer has prompted a legislative push at the State House to prevent this from happening again.

"This is not a public safety concern that was on anyone's radar prior to those two fires occurring," says Phil Nadeau, deputy city manager for the city of Lewiston. The tragedy of last August, he says, forced city authorities to take action to condemn units where power had been disconnected as uninhabitable.

Many landlords, he adds, did not like this. "They understood what it was we were trying to do but felt somewhat victimized. They have people in their buildings that are either paying their power or not paying their power, in those instances where they were not paying their power, they felt they were being held legally responsible."

Apart from the issue of legal responsibility, there are other problems to be resolved before the bill can be finalized, admits sponsor Herb Adams. For example, power companies are not always aware which of their customers are renters and which are property owners, says one utility spokesman.

"We don't think we know all the people who are renters; we don't know the landlords of those renters," says David Allen, who testified on behalf of Central Maine Power. "We may not have any idea who the landlord is or how to contact the landlord. Those are issues we think we can possibly address. Just based on what we do know, we estimate that we send out about 220,000 disconnection notices to people who rent in a given year."

And then, says Allen, there's the issue of customer privacy -- something which could prevent landlords from getting access to information about their customers' power bills, and therefore not being aware when they face being disconnected.

"As far as CMP is concerned, we don't share customer information, whether you're a current customer, or a lapsed customer, or for any other reason. We simply don't share information without the customer's permission," he says.

LD1695, and a similar bill, LD 1644, which also requires utility companies to notify landlords before disconnecting services, both go into work session next month, where sponsors hope these problems can be worked out.