Environmental groups and some councilmembers have opposed the nomination of Greer Gillis, the former leader of the Department of General Services, to the Public Service Commission.

They rejected the settlement as is, but the companies have 14 days to agree to revised terms for the deal.

Pepco customers in D.C. will start paying $2.60 more a month as part of an approved rate increase for the much-hated utility.

Remember last week, when the Washington Post reported that Pepco had received several million dollars more in federal tax credits over the past few years than it had paid in taxes?

In order to comply with proposed regulations requiring it to reduce the frequency and length of outages, Pepco wants to raise rates inside the District. But the much-maligned utility is experiencing some pushback from the city’s Office of the People’s Counsel, which has filed a motion with the District’s Public Service Commission to dismiss the utility’s request to raise rates.

Oh Pepco, when will we get over our on again/off again relationship? Too often we’ve been left in the dark by your absence and you’re one too many ruffles because of it.

Ward 7 D.C. council member Yvette Alexander wants the District’s Public Service Commission to take a hard look at Pepco‘s recent spike of power outages across the area, going as far as calling the company’s service “subpar.” The increased scrutiny stems from an outage last week that left the downtown NoMa business district in the dark for two days. Pepco asserts that outages are rectified mostly within minutes or hours, however this latest blackout has drawn the ire of many business owners, residents and D.C. government officials. “You can’t guarantee 100 percent service is never going to go out,” said Pepco President Tom Graham to NBC4 while on site during repairs.

Good morning, Washington. Think good thoughts for Tian Tian, the National Zoo’s male giant panda and the biological father of Tai Shan/Butterstick. Tian Tian underwent eye surgery yesterday to remove inflamed tissue from one of his third eyelids. He’s expected to make a full recovery, but in the meantime he’ll have to live with the shame of being the one to expose this whole pandas having third eyelids monstrosity. DCist has always held a…

Good morning, Washington. We’ll be standing by for a good chunk of the day to see what the Metro Board decides to do about the proposed fare hike – the Board is meeting at 11 a.m. for a session that is expected to produce a final vote on the fare hikes, which could go into effect as soon as January. Board members have indicated they would likely pass a fare hike that is slightly less…

Hey Washington — ever feel like you just don’t have enough to worry about when it comes to walking down the street in your own neighborhood? Sure, there’s the muggings and other crime, the street harassment, the killer Metrobuses, the screwed up pedestrian signals, the bicyclists vs. the drivers, and the occasional jaywalking sting, but really, who couldn’t use one more thing to add to the list of stuff that makes you never want to…

In case you missed the news yesterday, the Washington Post has devoted an extraordinary amount of front page column inches to the record breaking temperatures D.C. saw yesterday. At 12:05 p.m. on Wednesday, the temperature hit 102 degrees at Reagan National Airport, according to the National Weather Service, breaking the previous all time high record for Aug. 8, of 101 degrees, set in 1930. The oppressive heat also had a number of other newsworthy…