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John,
The so-called public utilities are really private companies, each one its own monopoly: the only game in town for its geographic area, even though all the households and businesses on the grid are fully dependent on just that one company for power.
As privately owned monopolies, not only are these companies unaccountable to the public, but they are also apt to wield their unfettered power and burgeoning profits to cozy up to politicians, in mutual back-scratching arrangements.
Across the country, a wave of such scandals has emerged, with companies delivering huge sums of dark money to obtain whatever special legislative treatment the utilities desire. With tens of millions of dollars, the companies have secured legislation that favors corporate profits over the people whom the utilities and the politicians are expected to serve.
As the only source of power available in a given locality, these companies should have been publicly owned from the start, but in the early 1900’s they were given monopoly status to invest in building the original power grid. Now over a century later, these monopolies are setting their immense power against democratic interests.
Tell Congress to pass legislation to ban political contributions from utilities, monopoly corporations, and corporations seeking government contracts now.
One of the biggest grifts prosecuted to date occurred in Ohio, where House Speaker Larry Householder took $61 million in bribes from the monopoly utility FirstEnergy, in exchange for orchestrating a $1.3 billion bailout paid for by Ohio ratepayers. Householder was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 20 years.
Meanwhile, Ohio Public Utilities Commissioner Sam Randazzo, was charged with grand theft, money laundering, and taking over $22 million in bribes -- 22 felonies in all. Showing the amazing chutzpah of a felon who never expected to be caught, FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones congratulated Randazzo on passing the bailout, sending him a digitally altered photo of Mount Rushmore with their faces on it and the caption, “[Expletive] anybody who ain’t us.”
Ohio is just one example where monopoly utilities and their government regulators take care of each other, wrecking the democratic process while eating the people’s lunch. Congress must act now to ban monopoly corporations, and companies seeking government contracts, from making contributions to politicians.
Meanwhile, in the face of frequent power outages, outrageous rate hikes, and massive environmental damage, utilities customers have nowhere to go.
In California, for instance, Pacific Gas and Electric equipment failures caused around 1,500 fires in just three years, including the Camp Fire in 2018, which alone resulted in 85 deaths, $16.5 billion in damages, and destroyed over 14,000 homes.
The Camp Fire was traced to a broken electrical line hook, but PG&E’s financial incentives are geared more toward paying shareholder dividends than maintaining and upgrading equipment. Over the five years before the Camp Fire, PG&E paid out more than $5 billion in dividends.
It’s time for Congress to put the needs of the people first. In these big-dollar utility-government conspiracies, the public are the losers.
Tell Congress to support democracy and to pass legislation banning utility and monopoly corporation contributions now.
Thank you for working to break up the unholy alliance between monopoly corporations and lawmakers.
- Amanda
Amanda Ford, Director
Democracy for America
Advocacy Fund
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