Hogan: shocked about electric rates

Remember the 2006 campaign when then-Governor Ehrlich was supposedly in the employ of utilities like Baltimore Gas and Electric? You know, those pesky high electric rates didn’t quite disappear overnight when Martin O’Malley came to town.

Today, Larry Hogan responded to Martin O’Malley’s newest attempt to distract voters from his record of failure and broken promises. This week, O’Malley’s showboating in the press involved electricity rates, which have risen by 90% since he became governor.

“It’s becoming really predictable,” said Larry Hogan. “To try to reverse sinking poll numbers, O’Malley is willing to promise anything, like lower electricity rates, or create meaningless small business government task forces. Governor O’Malley has always been good with rhetoric, it’s his record that has caused his wide-spread unpopularity.”

“Voters will not forget O’Malley’s disingenuous promise during the last campaign,” Hogan continued. “He was elected primarily because of TV commercials promising to stop the BGE rate hikes. But after three years of grandstanding and showboating, rates have risen 90%, far more than they were ever projected to rise.”

“Meanwhile, O’Malley and the pro-tax Democrats that run the General Assembly have passed multiple regulations and taxes on energy production, delivery, and usage,” Hogan said. “These actions will only serve to raise rates even further.”

“Again it comes back to showing real leadership and tackling problems in a comprehensive way,” concluded Hogan. “A quick fix of artificially limiting electricity rates is not a real solution. If O’Malley is serious about easing the burden on working families, he will roll back the crushing tax burden and stop using energy policy to regulate behavior.”

While those of us out here in the hinterlands haven’t seen the 90% increase other areas of the state have endured, Delmarva Power hasn’t exactly held the line on rate hikes either. Making the problem worse is the fact that our state is a net importer of electricity and will continue to be for the foreseeable future – we can build all the wind farms, solar panels, and other ‘green’ energy resources we want and it would hardly make a dent. (Now, working with the old standbys coal, nuclear, and natural gas may get us somewhere.) The problem will only get worse when the economy picks back up – for now we have somewhat of a reprieve because of the recession.

But the second-to-last paragraph in Hogan’s statement holds the key. Over the last few years, we have seen a number of bills passed to address the phantom problem of global climate change – taxing and regulating ourselves into the box of economic retardation, particularly against other states who choose to deal with the reality that our actions have little to do with climate change and that the best solution to pollution seems to be a balance between capitalism and common-sense regulation. Unfortunately, our General Assembly seems to change the rules of the game so often it’s never clear just which restrictions work well to combat the problem of pollution and which are just there to step on the toes of freedom-loving people and entrepreneurs. (My thinking is that most fall in the latter category.)

What might be best for Maryland is placing a moratorium on new restrictions for a few years in order to see how the current crop is doing. The one drawback I can see with this approach is that those who judge whether a regulation ‘works’ or not are also the same people who stand to gain from additional regulation in the form of tribute coerced from taxpayers and voluntarily given by those who feel government is the solution. (Yes, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, I am talking about you.) If the Bay was becoming cleaner simply by what’s in place now the CBF may not have much of a reason to exist anymore, so they just might be putting their thumb on the scale now and then.

We have enough of an issue with federal government interference in our lives that items done by the state garner little attention. But we need to be just as vigilant there as well as the local level. It’s a tough job, made more difficult by those who get a taste of political power and crave more, like Martin O’Malley.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.