Letter to the Editor: The Rich Just Keep Getting Richer: Santa Rosa Democrats Oppose Gulf Power Rate Hikes
Santa Rosa’s Democratic Executive Committee opposes any new rate increase for Gulf Power and urges the Public Service Commission to require the company immediately reduce rates in line with the depressed local economy.
The DEC was surprised to hear Gulf Power asking for more rate hikes, considering the company’s healthy profit history.
Gulf Power’s net income increased from $98.3 million in 2008 to $121.5 million in 2010, according to company Securities and Exchange filings. That’s $10 to $14 million more every year since 2008. This is a jump from the 2003 to 2007 time period, when Gulf Power profits grew at most $8 million per year.
Meanwhile, poverty rates have increased by about 7 percent in Escambia and 2 percent in Santa Rosa County since 2007.
Privatizing key public services just doesn’t work. It’s supposed to reduce consumer costs. Instead we have the second highest electricity rates in the southeast.
There’s no free market benefit because there’s no real competition when you’re talking about services people can’t do without. The free market doesn’t work with a captive customer base.
It’s no coincidence Gulf Power’s pie slice exploded at the same time the economy began to tank. As wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, the powerful are enjoying fewer restraints against soaking everybody else to grow their own bottom line.
What happens when public services are privatized is that the need for ever-higher profit margins will inevitably be taken out of working people’s and businessowners’ hides. In a bad economy, that spells disaster. This region is spiraling down to the economic bottom of the barrel, with Gulf Power leading the charge.
Rate increases on an indispensable service constitute a de facto tax hike, Nelson points out.
Do we really want private corporations taxing us without representation or oversight? What’s next – air and sunlight?
Why are we required to foot the bill for increasingly fat profits – especially considering all Gulf Power’s common stock is owned by Southern Company? That effectively locks local stakeholders out of company governance on any potential fraud, waste and abuse issues like executive salaries and pay bonuses.