Editorial: Corruption not enough to embarrass utility giant from returning to Springfield with its hand out. Say no.
Commonwealth Edison must think Illinoisans suffer from collective amnesia. Back in 2016, the power utility snagged sizable subsidies from the General Assembly for two of its nuclear power plants — greased by contracts and jobs to allies of then-House Speaker Michael Madigan. We know this because ComEd admitted it to federal prosecutors and paid a $200 million fine as punishment.
Now the utility, through its parent company, Exelon, is knocking on Springfield’s door again, hat in hand, hoping lawmakers and citizens forget that chapter as it once more asks for subsidies, this time for four other nuclear plants that didn’t get state help from the legislative package the utility secured in 2016.
We’re here to remind state lawmakers to not get hoodwinked into burdening ratepayers with costlier electric bills, especially by Springfield players whose lobbying practices have spawned federal corruption indictments.
As it did the last time, the utility giant is relying on union help to pitch the legislation. Nuclear plant subsidies in the labor-backed proposal would cost $600 million every year for a decade, according to Illinois Commerce Commission estimates. Abraham Scarr, director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy organization, wrote in an Tribune op-ed last month that the union-linked proposal would more than double ComEd’s yearly profits in under a decade, “to $1 billion annually.”
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Gov. J.B. Pritzker didn’t get behind the legislation, and we applaud him for that. But he put out his own proposal that includes subsidies to keep Exelon’s Dresden and Byron nuclear plants up and running to the tune of $71 million annually over a five-year span. That’s not nearly as big of a broadside to ratepayers as the union-backed bill, but it still would cost customers more. His Consumers and Climate First Act also would phase out coal by 2030 and require the state’s power supplying industry to be carbon-free by 2050. It would return to the Illinois Commerce Commission the say-so on utility rates and infrastructure spending, and create a path for customers to get restitution for illegal conduct committed by ComEd.
Why should Illinoisans give ComEd and its parent company any more money at all? The utility’s profit margin goes only in one direction — skyward. Scarr tells the Tribune that ComEd’s profits ballooned to $3.6 billion over the last seven years. Compare that with the 13-year period before that when the utility’s profits were $4.1 billion. ComEd was able to ramp up its profits by lobbying legislators for a law change in 2013 that effectively allowed the utility to sidestep the ICC, which regulates public utilities.
Christian Mitchell, a Pritzker deputy governor and point man on energy policy, told the Tribune that ComEd’s actions amounted to an end run that allowed the utility to sweeten its “profit base through the legislative process instead of having to litigate in front of the Illinois Commerce Commission.” According to Illinois PIRG, the law change cost ratepayers an additional $600 million from 2014 to 2020.
But it’s not enough to again give the ICC teeth to oversee ComEd. The commission’s chair is Carrie Zalewski, an attorney who is also the daughter-in-law of former 23rd Ward Ald. Michael Zalewski of Chicago, one of the Madigan allies allegedly entangled in the ComEd bribery scandal. Court documents allege a member of Madigan’s camp and a ComEd executive arranged for a former Chicago alderman, whom the Tribune has identified as Zalewski, to be paid $5,000 a month indirectly as a subcontractor. Neither Madigan nor Zalewski has been charged with wrongdoing.
And yet, last summer Chairwoman Zalewski presided over an ICC hearing in which ComEd outlined its ethics reform plan to commissioners — a clear and obvious conflict of interest. Pritzker could have asked her to step down from her role but didn’t. That certainly doesn’t give Illinoisans much confidence about the ICC’s impartiality and by extension, the governor’s bill too.
Energy reform that comes out of Springfield before the spring session’s scheduled adjournment Monday should bring an end to the so-called formula rate system that Springfield set up 2011, which led to automatic rate hikes and guaranteed profits for ComEd. It should restore to truly impartial ICC full authority over rate-setting. Legislation should put the state on a path toward clean energy. But the one thing lawmakers shouldn’t do — allow the utility giant to continue to pad its profit margin while crying poor and approaching the legislature and its customers for a bailout.
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