About that LES Surcharge

By: Mr. Wilson on February 7, 2007

LES wants a 5.5% surcharge added to local electric bills through December to help pay for the cost of purchasing power on the open market after this winter's major ice storm in central Nebraska damaged a good chunk of that area's transmission lines. That's all fine, but the Journal Star never bothers to report what the alternative is. Today's LJS editorial uses floppy logic like this to support the surcharge:

The burden of a surcharge for LES customers pales in comparison with the problems with which Nebraskans in the worst-hit areas had to cope.

In other words, other people had it worse, so we should feel lucky to pay 5.5% extra each month. Lucky we may be, but that is no justification for the surcharge. The surcharge may or may not be the best of the available options (it probably is), but how are we to know? If you don't understand why that bit of information is important for the public to know, read the comments at the bottom of the LJS article. Many of the commenters could really use some more information about the surcharge.

Comments

See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.

Dave K

February 7, 2007 at 5:50PM

And WTF does this mean?

Because LES is publicly owned, paying the surcharge now means that ratepayers actually will be doing themselves a favor in the long term. The surcharge deserves unanimous approval from the City Council.

“Because LES is publicly owned” could be followed by a number of things, such as:

1. ...this essentially amounts to a tax increase.

2. ...they are having these problems in the first place. Private companies would negotiate for lower open-market costs of electricity.

And while they’re using the cost of the average monthly bill to calculate what the increase will be ‘on average’, think about what 5.5% is to companies that use thousands of dollars in electricity per month. And I don’t for a second believe LES would suspend the surcharge if the costs are lower than estimated.

I’d much rather see LES sue George W. Bush for causing global warming, which in turn caused the ice storm.

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