“The story from hell,” one reporter called the Commonwealth Edison franchise hearings before the City Council’s Committee on Energy, Environmental Protection, and Public Utilities, which were held Monday and Tuesday, June 17 and 18. He was right. The negotiation of the city’s biggest contract refuses to fit into a sound bite. Worse yet, the stock story lines have become confused, with the often-arrogant utility claiming that it originally opposed the consumer service charge (a flat-rate fee that accrues even if you use no electricity), with some consumer groups staging their own bit of arrogant theater by walking out of the proceedings late Tuesday afternoon, and with the powerful Daley administration strangely uneasy about letting the public in on the process.
The city’s apparent lack of starch worried some of the aldermen and consumer advocates present. “The city played softball and Edison played hardball,” warned Maureen Dolan, director of the Chicago Energy Options Campaign. “The city cannot afford to ‘wimp out.’” Alderman Ed Smith asserted, “You’ve got to deal with big business like you were dealing with the Marquis de Sade: They come in with a knife and a razor–you’ve got to come in with a machine gun.”
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So it’s understandable that the media and others made a big thing of the machismo contest between Helman and Getzendanner. But it’s misleading. Daley has not been a wimp on this issue (his denying that he’s a wimp doesn’t make him one). The city’s negotiating position with Edison has been tough and consistent all along: a new franchise should include bill reduction for small users of electricity, enforceable energy-efficiency measures by the utility, plus improvements in reliability, environmental, and equal-opportunity programs. If no satisfactory agreement can be reached, the city stands ready to buy the company out as provided for in the 1948 franchise.
So perhaps in the Machiavellian world of high-stakes negotiations, it may be good strategy for consumer groups and aldermen to berate Helman so he can tell Getzendanner he has to get something more–if only to satisfy the mayor’s raging constituents.
This is a roundabout way of saying that Crawford could have been much, much safer than it was last summer. Curiously enough, city consultant Maurice Gamze had reported a low level of maintenance within the plant more than a year ago. On May 18, 1990–according to a hitherto confidential tape transcript–Gamze told the Mayor’s Electricity Working Group that “the electrical facilities at these plants [Crawford and Fisk] are very shoddy. I hate to say it, but the electrical switch here is not in good order. We were very shocked by the condition of the switchboards. It looks like the plant has been programmed for decommissioning in the near future, because we can see that there has been no great effort to maintain it. There are a number of failed boards, and instead of fixing them they bypass them. They have temporary cables, temporary boards. It’s just not normal power plant operations.” His point: in case of a buyout, the city should get Crawford cheap. Com Ed spokesperson John Hogan strongly denies Gamze’s assertions: “There is no plan to decommission Crawford station. It’s an integral part of our system, and it’s well run and well maintained even though it is 65 years old.”
The idea is paradoxical but simple–and widely practiced by other utilities: it’s cheaper for Edison to subsidize (or give away) energy-saving light bulbs, weatherization kits, even efficient appliances, than it is for the utility to build new power plants to generate electricity to run inefficient light bulbs (such as the ones it currently distributes), heat poorly insulated buildings, or run leaky refrigerators. Comparable conservation and “demand-side management” programs can be instituted for business and industry, and large institutions can be encouraged to “cogenerate” their own heat and electricity.
Despite repeated invitations, no one from the mayor’s administration attended the Chicago Electric Options Campaign’s April 27 energy options conference (Eisendrath and County Clerk David Orr showed up). The reasons for this characteristic reticence are unclear. Robert B. Wilcox, who cochaired the Mayor’s Energy Task Force of 1989, told the April 27 gathering, “Some of us are becoming a bit schizophrenic, seeing on the one hand that the mayor seems to be pursuing the Edison negotiations in sound directions and seeing on the other hand that the public’s confidence in the city’s negotiating activities are undermined by an excessive secrecy and unwillingness to participate in appropriate public forums.”
