Legislators support anti-competitive “fix” for big electric utilities

Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, wrote to Texas lawmakers a week or so ago:

Filed very late in the process, HB 3995 and SB 1938 would literally make it illegal for new entrants to competitively bid on new [electrical] transmission projects in Texas, because it would make new entrants illegal. Making new, competitive entrants illegal is breathtaking in its audacity… [it is] about as bad as it gets. The bill literally reads:

    “a certificate for a new transmission facility that directly interconnects with an existing electric utility [they all do] may only be granted to the owner of the existing facility.”

Language like that jumps off the page. This is an astonishing legislative protection for incumbent companies, legislatively shielding them from new competition.

He’s right but it is not the first time nor will it be the last that connected companies try use politicians to stack the deck in their favor.

In the letter Giovanetti explains that the legislation came about in a “nefarious” manner with it being “designed to overturn a competitive bid for a project in East Texas that would save consumers millions of dollars over the lifetime of the project, but which went against the interests of the incumbent provider, who now seeks to not only overturn that competitive bid, but rule out any such inconveniences to their monopoly in the future.”

It takes honest legislators to keep colleagues from getting away with such. Let’s hope yours votes among the good guys. But note: All in the Senate appeared to vote FOR this trash on voice vote. And, in the House, HD84’s John Frullo is a co-author of the bill.

You can read the official House bill analysis here.