PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Taking a page from the “throw-the-bums-out” script in politics, Mainers are poised to vote on an unprecedented plan to rid
FILE - In this Oct. 27, 2022 file photo, a home in Bingham, Maine, displays signs protesting a Quebec-to-New England hydropower corridor. This fall Mainers are going to vote on whether to throw out the state's two biggest private electric utilities. themselves of the state’s two largest electric utilities and start with a clean slate.
The referendum calls for creation of a nonprofit utility with a board made up of mostly elected members and a few appointed ones. A primary selling point is that the new utility would be beholden only to ratepayers, not corporate shareholders, allowing lower costs, greater investments in the grid and improved performance, supporters said. Interest rates for long-term borrowing for capital improvements also would be less costly for Pine Tree Power.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a more David vs. Goliath matchup,” said Seth Berry, a former state senator and a longtime critic of CMP. But there has been nothing on the scale of what’s proposed in Maine in terms of taking over the service territory of an entire state, Schryver said. Nebraska would come closest. It’s the only state where all ratepayers are served by municipal utilities, but it didn’t happen all at once, said Mike Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, based in Boston.
The proposal would set in motion a process for establishing a 13-member board. The privately operated, nonprofit Pine Tree Power utility would contract with a private grid operator through a competitive bidding process. The board would approve an operation plan, and CMP and Versant workers get bonuses to sign on with the new contractor.
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