Pepco Execs Take Responsibility For Outages

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pepco executives are taking responsibility for poor service after recent power failures and repeating a plan to improve reliability.

Officials acknowledged at a news conference Monday that the company has fallen short in its service. The conference came a day after The Washington Post reported that the company's day-to-day reliability is near the bottom in industry surveys.

Upgrades are expected to cost the average customer in Maryland and Washington an extra $1 a month if regulators approve a rate hike. Political leaders and the public have previously criticized the company for a lag in restoring service after major snowstorms earlier this year, as well as summer outages.

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