We must organize + energize to rout Unitil
The fight against corporate utilities won't be won with hopelessness
Hopelessness is the easiest thing in the world. If those of us being wrung dry by Unitil want to throw off the yoke of their hideous, for-profit practices, we have first and foremost to get organized.
According to reporting produced by nonprofit climate action newsroom Floodlight, ‘Fraud and corruption is on the rise at U.S. utilities’, with ‘lies and bribes that cost consumers and threaten the planet.’ The gist is that there’s collusion between power company executives and the government officials and/or appointees who regulate the energy industry. Specifically in Ohio, “Attorney General David Yost accused two power company executives of attempting to “hijack” state electricity policy for their own corrupt ends by bribing an energy regulator with over $4.3 million.”
Let’s leave Ohio and come back to Massachusetts. Time and again when Unitil has requested approval for a rate increase from our state Department of Public Utilities, there has been an organizing effort among residents and politicians. We pack the public meetings, take part in letter-writing campaigns, pen op-eds, and so on. Yet many people sit out that effort, insisting that it will all be for naught, that it's a done deal, and that the public comment period is just window-dressing for a backroom deal we can’t hope to alter.
Reports of energy industry corruption makes that cynicism – call it hopelessness – seem more reasonable. Why go through the trouble of resisting the inevitable? If power companies are bribing regulatory officials, what can petitions and letters and testimony do to persuade the bribe-takers to listen to the better angels of their being and act in the public interest rather than the pursuit of self-enrichment?
This is one and the same argument that tries to stifle every grassroots project. Meaning, it’s one and the same obstacle that we always need to overcome. There is always an abundance of reasons not to take the risk of working for change. It’s always safer to stay motionless while the “inevitable” befalls us. We need to realize those reasons are not good enough, and that safety can blind us to necessity. If we want change to happen in the interest of the many rather than the interest of the few, each of us has to decide to become a part of that many.
On the other side of the country, in California, we see more exasperating news from the energy industry: PG&E has announced record profits of $2.2 billion for 2023, a nearly 25 percent increase year to year. Though this announcement comes immediately after the company implemented a rate hike for 2024, PG&E leaders claim there is no connection between rate increases and the jump in 2023.
If they are raking it in, why raise hikes? They could leave the rates unchanged, and still be making huge profits of which a healthy percentage can be deposited in the paychecks of company executives. (The Floodlight report reminds us to wonder how much of that money is being stuffed into the pockets of regulators, as well.)
How is a government-sanctioned monopoly like power distribution allowed to gouge customers like this? Why don’t regulations make this type of behavior impossible in captive markets? The explanation is regulatory capture. Many lawmakers and regulators are friends with people in the industry. People in the industry have the time, the money, and the motive to show up to meetings, to hearings, to dinners, to parties, where regulators are going to be. Do you? I know I certainly can't be in all those places at all of those times, insofar as I have to work, so that I can pay my bills. I as a single person am powerless to neutralize regulatory capture. But we, as a collective, are not powerless. We have the numbers to show up. Any time power people and regulatory people are going to be in the same room, we, collectively, can show up in even greater numbers, and monopolize the conversation.
Knowing who can show up, and when to show up, and what we need to say, is a product of organizing. Here are some other ideas about what should we be doing these days to organize against Unitil:
1. Petition our local government to adopt a municipality aggregation program… but wait, we already did that! Our CEA program went online in Fitchburg in 2023. Well done, us.
2. Provide detailed, gut-wrenching feedback to the DPU explaining that we cannot afford to give Unitil and its shareholders all the profits they want. And when we do this, we shouldn’t just send our stories off into the ether. Keep copies of your testimony, and records of who spoke up and when. Have that war chest of evidence ready to go next time its needed, so we can build capacity and be more impactful as time goes on.
3. Request that our state delegation research and define a legislative path forward. We need them to clarify that the outdated rules against creating new, or reverting to, municipally-owned power supply do not stop us from planning such a move. Sen. Cronin and Rep. Kushmerek have thus far been notably vocal and active against Unitil, but their attention is divided, and their resources aren’t infinite. If they’re going to help us make progress toward local control, we have to get involved and lend them our energy. At the same time we can use our citizen lobbying power to ask officials for tighter regulations to lower the ceiling on corporate profits as a percentage of capex. Shrinking the profit margin weakens the corporate will to resist municipal take-over.
4. Insist that your ward councilor become a leader on this issue. Any incumbent or candidate who throws up their hands and say, dealing with Unitil is impossible, is someone who should automatically out of the running. If we want to organize our tens of thousands of residents into an effective change-making movement, it makes sense to insist that the people paid to represent our interests at the municipal level and as liaisons to the state, have this huge issue front and center on their agenda. Make Unitil activism a requirement for the job. Beating that drum at every ward meetings – the ward meetings you have to insist your councilors schedule and host! – and by calling and writing, and showing up at council and city committee meetings. Speak with your neighbors person-to-person and online. In short, organize, and press your councilor to take lead on that organizing.
5. Form an Energy & Sustainability Committee for your ward or for the city. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do this. It turns out that the rights of speech, petitioning, and assembling are guaranteed by the Constitution. Such committees are the ideal places to coordinate meeting attendance, compile testimony, and consolidate resources for things like citizen lobbying and electoral pressure.
We don’t need to be more corrupt than the energy executives. We don’t need to be more eloquent, or more iniquitous, than the Unitil president when he shows up to a hearing in our community spaces and laughs in our faces. We don’t need to have more money than the other guys. We don’t need better access than they have. Our resource is each other, and we only have access to that resource if we identify and activate our interdependent connections. Without organization, we’re just an atomized population of consumers agreeing tacitly to our continued exploitation by the well-oiled extractive machinery of for-profit energy corporations.
When we read about bribes and corruption and power companies cranking up the rates again, our response doesn’t have to be cynicism. It must not be cynicism. With organization, we are much larger than our opponents. Hopelessness is for quitters and cowards. Our response needs to be an expression of the values of industriousness, seriousness, and courageousness we find in such abundance in the river valleys, city neighborhoods, and rural townships of North Central Mass.