Before I left for a week in Hawaii, I posted a piece about the golden retirement package of PGE's Peggy Fowler. I was therefore happy to find on my return that the O's Steve Duin has kept the heat on Fowler. And PGE.
Why my concern with the woman I call Portland's "million dollar baby"? I assure you it's nothing personal. It's just that I've long been in favor of public ownership of PGE, the state's largest electrical utility, whether by a Public Utility District or by the the City of Portland itself. Unfortunately, local movers and shakers and two of the city's newspapers (and here) have effectively torpedoed any public effort to take control of the utility with bloated executive salaries and the highest electrical rates in the region.
So Peggy Fowler isn't the issue. She's merely the symptom of a peculiarly American belief that private works better than public. I disagree, which is why I wrote this tongue-in-cheek proposal for privatization of Portland's water supply.
In Duin's second column Sunday, he writes
"If you're a PGE customer, you're paying for the former chief executive's extravagant compensation package."
He then notes the Citizens Utility Board's Bob Jenks' calculation that Peggy Fowler's $4.5 million "going away present" ..."could have provided emergency heating assistance to 12,460 Oregon families."
But I was more interested in what Duin had to say in his column the week before:
" 'She's [Fowler] being rewarded for keeping PGE private and keeping PGE rates high,' said Dan Meek, a Portland lawyer who has long argued for publicly owned utilities."
And:
"Since 2001, on Fowler's watch, PGE customers have seen their rates rise 46.2 percent, meaning those customers must pay 15 percent more for their electricity than PacifiCorp customers pay for theirs.
"Another point of comparison? In the same time frame, customers of Seattle City Light -- a municipal-owned utility half PGE's size -- saw their rates drop 8.4 percent.
"What does Seattle City Light pay chief exec Jorge Carrasco? $225,000."
That, in a nutshell, is why I prefer the public ownership option of regulated monopoly utilities like PGE.
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