By Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia
Christine Guhl-Sadovy’s recent opinion piece is an astonishing attempt to escape responsibility for a crisis she helped create. As President of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, she wasn’t watching this unfold from the sidelines. She was part of it. And now that New Jersey families are being crushed by soaring electric bills, she’s hoping the public forgets her role.
Across the state, families are opening bills that have jumped nearly 20 percent over last year. That’s not inflation. That’s not some complicated global supply issue. It’s the direct result of an energy agenda that put progressive ideology ahead of reliability, and political headlines ahead of common sense. The Murphy administration pushed it. The BPU approved it. And now the public is paying for it.
Back in March, Guhl-Sadovy had nearly six hours to explain all of this when she testified before the Senate Select Committee and the Assembly Telecommunications and Utilities Committee. She had every chance to level with the public and take responsibility. Instead, we got a performance. She pointed fingers in every direction: PJM, federal regulators, market structures, even the weather. Everyone, it seems, was to blame except the very agency she runs.
When asked how much of our electricity comes from natural gas, she didn’t have an answer. When pressed about whether the BPU had ever challenged PJM’s flawed capacity forecasts, she had nothing to offer. And when lawmakers asked what the BPU was doing to help families and small businesses drowning in utility costs, she offered vague promises about long-term transitions and avoided saying anything meaningful.
What actually happened is this: under Guhl-Sadovy’s leadership, the BPU became an arm of the Murphy Administration’s rigid, one-track green energy agenda. Natural gas was demonized. Nuclear energy was ignored. Permitting for new generation projects ground to a halt. The administration threw billions at offshore wind contracts that collapsed, leaving ratepayers holding the bill for a product that endangers marine life and never came online.
While that was happening, public money was poured into electric school buses that don’t run in cold weather. Democrats prioritized putting gas-powered leaf blowers on the chopping block instead of addressing the grim reality that our grid cannot keep up with increasing demand. EV incentives were handed out without a plan to manage the added strain on an already unstable system. These weren’t energy solutions. They were pet projects for political press releases, bankrolled by the very people now struggling to keep their homes powered.
This wasn’t an oversight. It was a calculated plan carried out over years, despite repeated warnings from Republican legislators who were mocked, ignored, and shut out of the conversation. Now, with consequences on full display, the very people responsible are hiding behind consultant-crafted talking points and pretending to be shocked by the mess they created.
And while Guhl-Sadovy attempts to scrub her fingerprints from the scene, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill is parroting the same broken message in Washington. She throws around terms like “energy equity” and “clean investment” while ignoring what these policies are doing to the working families in her own district. She blames the Trump administration for nearly eight years of energy mismanagement under Phil Murphy and a Democrat legislative majority. If voters give her the keys to the governor’s mansion in November, they can expect more of the same: higher bills, unreliable power, and zero accountability.
Jack Ciattarelli offers a better path. He’s realistic about New Jersey’s energy needs and grounded in solutions that work. He supports affordable, clean natural gas. He’s committed to modern nuclear power—energy that is reliable, American, and already proven. He focuses on results families can feel when they open their monthly utility statement.
This isn’t a debate about whether we care about the environment. The question is whether we’re willing to admit when a plan is failing and make a course correction. Guhl-Sadovy can spin the narrative all she wants, but the truth is right there on the bills sitting on kitchen tables across this state. Her agency didn’t ask hard questions. It didn’t push back on bad assumptions. It didn’t protect the people it was created to serve. And now, with the damage done, she wants to pose as a watchdog. Just months ago, she was rubber-stamping the unrealistic, unreliable, and costly policies that led us here.
New Jersey families deserve better. They deserve leaders who are honest about what went wrong and willing to take responsibility. They deserve people who will stand up for ratepayers, not for political narratives. And they deserve an energy plan that makes life more affordable, not harder.
Voters are watching. They remember who showed up, who stayed silent, and who only started speaking when it became politically necessary to do so.
