Guarantee Electricity Not Profits!
By Milton Meyer
Entergy is a privately-owned energy company that provides electric power to the city of New Orleans for profit. As a condition of their sweetheart contract with the city government, Entergy gets a guaranteed rate of profit—technically a Return on Equity (ROE)—that is negotiated by the New Orleans City Council on behalf of the city’s capitalists.
After a year of wrangling, the City Council voted to lower Entergy’s profit to 9.35%, down from 11.1%. This leaves workers paying one of the highest energy rates in the country.
Originally, the City Council wanted the rate at 8.93%, but when Entergy squawked, Mayor Cantrell and a group of big energy users offered the 9.35% figure. Entergy’s CEO said that 9.35% was not “just and reasonable” and hampered its ability to upgrade the power grid. This after paying a $5 million fine for trying to deceive the City Council and the public by paying actors to support the construction of a widely unpopular fracked gas power plant in New Orleans East!
Entergy then offered to “front” $75 million dollars to the Sewerage and Water Board (S&WB) to upgrade its power station in return for a 10% ROE. Looking out for her friends at S&WB, Cantrell endorsed this proposal wanting us to believe that this would be a service to the people. Cantrell constantly preaches that everyone pays his or her “fair share,” but not one of Cantrell’s “fair share deals” has been anything more than an elaborate accounting trick where our money is shuffled among the pockets of the capitalists.
Now that Entergy’s profits have been “slashed,” the average consumer will see a $3 savings a month—in the short term. But don’t go splurging on Xmas gifts just yet. Soon customers will be paying $8 or more for the unwanted fracked gas plant and a solar plant.
Everyone should have the right to electricity, heat and clean water. When public utilities are privately owned, profit determines every decision. The devastating fires plaguing California are the latest example: Pacific Gas and Electricity paid millions to executives while their neglect of maintenance killed dozens and displaced thousands of people.
The New Orleans Workers Group demands that public utilities be just that— public, owned by the municipalities that use their services and run by a board of technical professionals and workers responsive to the input of the city’s working class residents.