Cities have enough on plates, don’t need utility business too
Senate Bill 165 is being considered to provide Local Choice Energy. Local Choice Energy would give municipalities, counties and tribal entities the ability to take over utility services in their area. As president of the Albuquerque City Council, I can tell you from first-hand experience the city of Albuquerque has no business running a utility.
No one who thinks their local electeds aren’t doing enough to solve housing, crime or just deliver basic services thinks it’s a good idea to add running utilities to their plates. Imagine if your utility grid was suddenly competing for the same political priorities and funds as your pothole and playground funds.
When we talk to other cities who have tread this path, it appears that many electeds and their constituents now regret it. In many states, the costs increase, not decrease as supporters claim, and the programs rely on out-of-state energy brokers to have the program work. Here’s the scary part — those out-of-state energy brokers aren’t regulated like our current utilities, which means the burden of oversight and negotiation rests on the city, county or tribal entity. Most of our staff are already overtaxed, which means we will fail miserably at yet another thing to oversee.
Perhaps most important, to achieve our long-term climate goals we need a statewide approach. That requires investment and negotiation at a scale only large, regulated utilities can provide. While I’m proud to have authored our state’s largest municipal solar project of its time in 2018, and proud our mayor and councils since have stepped up that game, the idea that a hundred different cities could achieve better outcomes alone than we can through a few large utilities held to the highest standard by the Public Regulation Commission simply doesn’t pass the common-sense test.
Here in City Hall, we have enough on our plates and, besides, voters just chose to restructure the PRC to manage these energy priorities at utility scale. That new PRC, led by actual energy policy experts who were just examined and confirmed by the state Senate for their ability to understand and implement the challenges required by our climate and energy crisis, hasn’t even been given a chance. Let’s hold them and their regulated utilities accountable to do their jobs and hold ourselves accountable to do our own.