Two weeks ago I criticized the proposed merger of Puget Sound Energy with outside companies, some foreign owned.
I pointed out that PSE customers in Island, Jefferson and Skagit counties might form public utility districts rather than pay their bills to an outside company.
I’ve now heard PSE’s side of the story and learned that the merger may have some advantages for many of us.
PSE provides electricity to east and south King County and several other counties, but has only about seventy electricity customers in Lake Forest Park and none in Shoreline. It does, however, provide gas throughout Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Seattle, the rest of King County and several other Western Washington counties, whether those areas get their electricity from PSE, Seattle City Light or a public utility district.
The merger might help Shoreline and Lake Forest Park because it can help the company raise needed capital to fix aging infrastructure – pipes to bring gas to all of us, and poles and wires to bring electricity to those 70 customers in Lake Forest Park.
The merger will form a privately held company that PSE representatives say will be able to raise needed capital more easily than would a publicly held company that would have to go to the stock market.
The PSE representatives say stockholders in the new business are no more likely to be foreigners than in the current company.
Unaffiliated Republican explains strategy
I mentioned a few weeks ago that a Republican official, Curt Fackler, was running with “no party preference” for state insurance commissioner.
When I talked to Fackler last week he explained his strategy. He admitted that his decision is a gamble.
It won him attention in June starting when Fox News noted this Spokane County Republican chairman running for Washington insurance commissioner as an example of Republicans avoiding their party’s label. David Postman of the Seattle Times picked it up, and I commented on it a week later.
He said it might give him a chance to make his point in a general-election run against Democratic incumbent Mile Kreidler. He argues that Kreidler has allowed companies to make unjustified rate increases, to build huge surpluses and to overbill the state for consulting.
But using the “no party” label may hurt him in the primary against a third candidate, John Adams, who is running with the Republican label, but has few contacts within the party and doesn’t seem to respond to press inquires.
Fackler admits that in a three-way race for a down-ballot position like insurance commissioner, an unaffiliated candidate will have a hard time beating someone with a Republican label.
If he is successful, he may be able to make one of his other points, that insurance is not partisan.
Evan Smith is Enterprise forum editor. Send comments to him at entopinion@heraldnet.com.
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