Four types of scandals utility companies get into with money from your electric bills
October 10, 2020 in Blogs
By ProPublica
Across the country, electric utilities have worked the levers of power to win favorable treatment from state policymakers.
This week, a Richmond Times-Dispatch and ProPublica investigation found that Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest public utility, successfully lobbied to reshape a major climate bill to cover its massive offshore wind project. The move shifted risk from the company’s shareholders to its ratepayers. As a result of the legislation, a typical residential customer’s bill is projected to increase by nearly $30 per month over the next decade.
Dominion says its wind project is necessary to meet the state’s new renewable energy goals. The utility’s lobbying success underscores its ability to work through the legislative process in Richmond, where special interests have taken on outsized roles in policymaking.
Elsewhere, utilities have gone much further, crossing the line into potentially criminal behavior.
In Illinois, the largest electric utility acknowledged in July it gave jobs and money to associates of the state House speaker in return for favorable legislation, according to a deferred prosecution agreement with the company in federal court.
In Ohio, a power company allegedly funneled $60 million into a slush fund for a legislative leader in exchange for his backing of a bailout of two nuclear plants. The utility has not been charged, but the elected official now faces a racketeering charge in what prosecutors said was “likely the largest bribery, money laundering scheme ever perpetrated” in the state.
“The temptation for a utility to take its customers’ money and spend it on influencing politics and essentially buying off politicians in ways to help them make even more money — it’s a temptation that has proven to be pretty irresistible for many utilities,” said David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog group that advocates renewable energy.
Below are four ways electric utilities have tried to influence decision-making within state and local governments.
Secret Political Spending
FirstEnergy is one of the nation’s largest electric companies and owns three regulated utilities in Ohio, where the FBI and federal prosecutors are seeking to unravel bribery allegations.
Authorities allege that FirstEnergy contributed $60 million to a group overseen by Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder in exchange for his help passing legislation that provided a billion-dollar bailout of two failing nuclear energy plants. That bill also reduced standards for renewable energy and the energy efficiency programs that save customers money.
Prosecutors have charged Householder with racketeering. He has pleaded …read more
Source: ALTERNET
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