BTW, before the Democratic defenders come and try to slam me for saying this is the fault of the Democrats and apparently giving the Republicans a free pass here, again I would point out that this started under a Democrat governor and with a Democrat controlled legislature. Even today, with a Republican governor for the first time in 40 years, the Democrats still overwhelmingly control the state legislature in numbers far and above what are required to end any filibuster by the minority party. All of which went along for the ride and none of which ever slowed down the process and built in any adequate protections for us, the consumers that they have royally screwed over with their failed plans.
If the same thing had happened under a GOP controlled legislature, I'd still be here slamming them for becoming too cozy with big business power companies and for failing to protect the voters and consumers in the state.
Worse yet, and even more so driving home my point here -- the governor of the state negotiated a compromise rate reduction/increase slowing plan with the power companies that in large measure looked a lot like what was passed by the legislature. Some key differences were an ability for consumers to opt out of deferred rate increases and instead pay the full increased costs immediately. If you chose to opt out you'd save interest fees over the life of the increase. Basically the governor's plan included choice for consumers, something that Democrats claim to be in favor of. Unfortuantely the Democrats came in and kept pieces of the governor's plan but did away with any hope of choice. It was all or nothing. At the same time they also mandated the firing of the PSC members just to send a message that they were really mad at the commission for allowing the increases.
Regardless of who sat on the commission the justification was there for rate increases and to this day there is still not real compeition in the state. Rather than re-regulating the industry and fixing the problem they created, they just tweaked the problem a bit letting it fester for later. Very reminiscent of their national level brethren's take on Social Security and Medicare. It's not broken and doesn't need overhauling... just tweak it and let it keep limpin' along.
Such is what Democrats give us when we let them have power.
