You wouldn’t know it from the dry talk coming out of Springfield lately, but electric utility deregulation is a hot topic these days, a strong contender to become one of the fashionable subjects of enlightened commentary in the early part of 1998. Even before Jim Edgar put it back in the news recently–expressing some surprise reservations about the bill just passed in the state legislature before signing it as expected–the Golden Promise of Deregulation was well on its way to becoming prime-time pundit fodder all across the nation. In recent weeks I have found it in a full-color ad supplement tucked into the New York Times and in a long article in an in-flight magazine, of all places. From these harbingers I predict that in the months to come it will hold an irresistible charm for the nation’s most exalted talking heads and opinion molders. It’s a ready-made sermon, a parable for our times with all the mandatory features.
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Here in Illinois, the pseudopopulist pageant of utility deregulation has been going on for nearly a year, pitting corporation against corporation, PR department against PR department, in a desperate battle to persuade the public that one business behemoth is more a friend of the people than another, that each conglomerate wants deeply and earnestly to deal with us in the thoughtful, service-oriented manner we’ve come to expect in the customer-driven 90s. And who is to say that this is inappropriate? On that golden day when full competition finally does arrive, such questions will be the stuff of everyday life, as normal to us as the claims of competing laundry detergents: Who should we go with this year, honey–the friendly folks at Com Ed or the efficient, clear-eyed men of Enron?
Commonwealth Edison, the monopoly with the most to lose from the arrival of deregulation, shamelessly tried to convince the public not only of its friendliness but of its whooping enthusiasm for the process that could very well have put it out of business. Like Louis XVI donning a red liberty cap during the early years of the French Revolution, Com Ed handed out cardboard “Deregulation Fans” at the Taste of Chicago last summer and ran newspaper ads depicting smiling wall sockets and declaring the company’s ardent support for industry deregulation. There was, of course, a recurring speciousness problem, as in May, when Com Ed trotted out references to states’ rights, and in the newspaper ad that insisted they looked forward to competition so they could show the world what good guys they are deep down inside: “As for us”–the operators of the now-notorious Zion nuclear plant announced–“we feel that the competition with other providers will challenge us to truly earn your business and cause us to do our jobs even better.” The legislation they were pushing, meanwhile, held competition off for years and then allowed it only with plenty of caveats and residual regulation, so they could keep soaking us long into the next century.
Not that this is necessarily a regrettable development. Full deregulation in this industry would be a disaster for most consumers, and we are fortunate that the legislation includes stiff regulatory provisions against discrimination by energy providers, for continuity of service, and for customer access to certain kinds of information.
“We’ve gone way beyond monopolies into something entirely new,” says Jeff St. Clair, a journalist who has covered deregulation battles elsewhere. “Right now you have thousands of utilities that have some sort of responsibility to their consumers and some sort of local oversight. Yes, this has been maliciously abused in the past, but there were mechanisms for controlling these things.” Ten years from now, St. Clair believes, “you’ll have gone to a situation with four or five big power companies, which you will have no control over. How does your utility board do battle with a multinational corporation? You’re really forsaking something, and for what? For the lure of a marginally smaller rate? Or for the fantasy of, We’ll be able to choose between Enron or Duke Power or Entergy?”
