Mid-day Monday I attended and testified at the Public Service Commission’s hearing on Ameren Missouri’s $447 million rate increase.
I dressed incorrectly.
Normally a navy blue blazer, grey slacks and dress shoes blend in everywhere. Alas, most of the men in the crowd wore camo jackets, baseball caps and boots.
And, where I used my time to challenge the notion that a 10%+ Rate of Equity was excessive in the 21st Century (can you have a more guaranteed investment than a monopoly utility stock?), the camo guys wanted Ameren Missouri to abandon windmills and solar and burn more coal.
Why? That’s what FOX News tells them Donald Trump prefers – drill baby drill, burn baby burn.
Almost lost in the noise was the basic fact that they and me agreed that Ameren doesn’t need a rate increase five times the current rate of inflation. Nor does Ameren need to be paying a CEO almost $9 million a year and a couple of other executives well into seven figures. I did note that Ameren has made so much money out of Missouri that they’ve managed to buy a number of other utility companies. I think that got a couple of nods.
Not mentioned at the hearing was Ameren’s latest gambit to have ratepayers foot the bill for future project which may or may not benefit customers.
Now the bad news: the PSC staff has already thrown in the towel. They trimmed a token 10% from the rate increase proposal and dropped the Return on Equity about a percent and called that a good day’s work. Expect the commissioners to go along with that “compromise.”
Never mind the lady on a medical device who noted that electricity is her third biggest expense or the seniors on fixed incomes who wondered how they could keep paying skyrocketing utility bills when food, medicines and other necessary things keep costing more. Even the camo guys acknowledged that the fix was in, that regulators obviously like the view from Ameren’s back pocket.
In so many ways, even down to an electric bill, we live in Trump World. The camo guys don’t realize it but they praise a rich guy who works only to help other rich guys grow richer. This rate increase will be great for stockholders – and dangerous to customers. The issue is not just this increase but the system which encourages it.
I remember back in the 1980’s when the federal government had heating assistance in the winter and colling aid in the summer. Note the Trump administration’s disdain for helping any non-billionaire.
The Ameren folk in the ‘question and answer’ part of the hearing were a bit nebulous about how many people lose electric service each year – and wouldn’t venture a guess about how many more would lose service with he proposed 15% rate increase.
Sorry, I doubt that. I’d bet lunch and dinner money that Ameren can project, within a few hundred, how many customers this rate proposal will kick off the grid. Not that they care.
The camo guys, meanwhile, will disappear into the woods until FOX News or the Donald summons them back to battle. This time the cause is just…they just need to dig in a bit more.
Glenn Koenen