Maine public power opponents predict effort to oust current utilities will fizzle

Opponents of a campaign to launch a consumer-owned electric utility in Maine run by elected officials called on the state’s voters to reject a plan to place the idea on the 2023 ballot.

The proposal to replace Maine’s two privately held utilities, Central Maine Power (CMP) and Versant, with a new entity known as the Pine Tree Power Company fell short of the number of signatures needed to put the matter on this year’s November ballot, but its backers this week said they would continue gathering signatures to put the idea up for a public vote next year. The opposition, however, quickly took the news as a sign that the public had rightful doubts about the proposal.

The advocacy group Maine Affordable Energy Coalition told the state’s major newspaper that voters had realized that buying out the companies and launching Pine Tree Power would be an expensive proposition. “The proposal to seize CMP and Versant would create a $13.5 billion debt that everyone would have to pay off through higher electric bills, which is why almost everyone who learns about this proposal for government-controlled power is against it,” Willy Ritch, executive director of the coalition, told the Portland Press Herald.

Ritch went on to predict the continuing petition drive would lose momentum and still fail to reach the required number of signatures. “The longer the debate over government-controlled power takes, the more people learn about it,” he said. “And the more people learn about it, the less they like it.”

The Pine Tree campaign received a set-back last summer when Gov. Janet Mills vetoed L.D. 1708. The idea began as a legislative drive that did pass the legislature before Mills nixed the bill in July, calling it “a patchwork of political promises rather than a methodical reformation of Maine’s complicated electrical transmission and distribution system.”

Mills said that there could indeed be room for more public oversight and governance over the utilities, but the bill was not the answer.

Proponents of the Pine Tree plan have based their proposal on the idea that CMP and Versant are owned by out-of-state corporations and therefore don’t take Maine’s concerns seriously.

Stephanie Clifford, campaign manager for Our Power, said Wednesday that the organization’s petition drive fell short in part because of COVID-19 restrictions, and that public dissatisfaction was still high enough to keep the idea alive this year. “We have already collected 73 percent of what we need – and that’s with no corporate funding, in under 3 months, at the very highest peak of the pandemic,” she said. “We’re in it for the long run and forging ahead until we get the job done.”

The opponents of the plan also have a solid base of support, including a collection of mayors, organized labor and leadership of some of Maine’s largest corporations.

In a Jan. 20 commentary in the Press Herald, Edison Electric Institute (EEI) President Tom Kuhn and Michael Monahan, 2nd District vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Pine Tree Power would be a government-owned utility run by a private contractor that would saddle ratepayers with some $4.7 billion in additional costs over 30 years.

“Advancing Maine’s clean-energy goals is best achieved through positive dialogue among stakeholders, not through a radical takeover effort,” the article said. “This would lead to better outcomes much faster than any change in ownership structure could ever hope to accomplish. Now is not the time to roll the dice on Maine’s energy future.”