of a legislative appropriation. Hatch obtained a similar court order in 2005 requiring the state to continue to fund essential government services during a partial government shutdown that year. Hatch was an advocate for utility ratepayers. In 2001 he petitioned the Public Utilities Commission to put the brakes on a "no surprise bill" program by Reliant Energy Minnegasco that was marketed as a way for consumers to bring predictability to their home heating costs but resulted in customers paying as much as 20 percent more on natural gas. In 2005 he issued a scathing report faulting CenterPoint Energy for deliberately violating the law designed to protect low-income people from having their heat turned off in the winter. "They violated the law and every standard of human decency," Hatch said at the time. He got the company to reconnect power to 5,000 people. In 2006 he asked the Public Utilities Commission to roll back a rate hike proposed by Xcel Energy after discovering that it was asking for higher rates to collect taxes it would never pay and saddling residents with larger rate hikes than businesses. Hatch was active in protecting consumers in other sales transactions. In 2002 he won sweeping concessions from several automobile dealers that sold optional warranties and financial products, requiring them to tape-record all sales transactions in which they sold such products. In 2001 he obtained a settlement with US Bancorp requiring the bank to make refunds to customers (one-third of whom were over 80 years old) who were misled into buying long-term 10- and 20-year brokered certificates of deposit, thinking they were regular, short-term bank CDs. He sued the nation's largest maker of bulletproof vests for police officers, claiming the company continued to sell vests it knew would degrade in light. The company later filed bankruptcy. In October 2002, an airplane carrying Senator Paul Wellstone crashed in northern Minnesota, killing Wellstone 11 days before the state general election. Hatch, a Democrat, worked closely with the state's Republican secretary of state to ensure that people who already voted for Wellstone on absentee ballots would get another chance to vote. Hatch was reelected to a second term as attorney general on November 5, 2002. Republicans won every other constitutional office that year. Hatch won more votes in that election than any candidate in any previous race for constitutional office in Minnesota history. After learning that the legislature had