Mainers vote down ballot measure to create consumer-owned utility

The Hill ^ | 11/08/2023 | ZACH SCHONFELD

[ChicagoConservative27]

Maine voters rejected a ballot initiative Tuesday that would have replaced the state’s electric utilities with the first state consumer-owned utility.

The initiative, Question 3, would have created the Pine Tree Power company through a takeover of Maine’s two investor-owned utilities, Versant and CMP. The Associated Press called the race Tuesday night with about 68 percent of the vote counted, indicating only about 30 percent of voters supported the proposition.

[ChicagoConservative27]

Voters got this one right

[Fido969]

Government-owned, not “consumer-owned”.

Unlike a real owner, consumers would have no say in the governance and running of the utility.

[ProgressingAmerica]

The amount of double-speak here is mind numbing.

With the starting point of a ballot box, the end result would not be something “consumer owned”. It would be government owned.

It would just be dressed up around the edges to appear as if it were consumer owned.

[gibsonguy]

“The amount of double-speak here is mind numbing.“

This level of propaganda is typical of little leftist scumbags who write for The Hill

[Rich21IE]

Yep, I’m surprised. Mainers are smarter than I knew.

[Maine Mariner]

The ads opposing the take over were very effective and involved many small business owners that are well known and well liked in the communities their businesses operate.

One ad was very effective. It showed what happens to a region when the power company is government owned-political hacks hired, no inventory of poles to replace those that are destroyed during a storm, etc. etc.

[11th_VA]

Bum

[ETCM]

If it’s like the “consumer owned utilities” here in CA, it’s not a utility at all. It’s an organization that by force of law uses the utility company’s infrastructure to directly compete with them, sometimes buying the energy at subsidized rates from the utility, as well as on the energy market. In the end, customers pay about the same price for the same energy delivered through the same infrastructure, but a new group of people stuff their pockets with cash.

[fini]

If it was truly consumer owned it would have been called a Co-Op.

I belonged to a Co-Op utility in he 1990s. It was well run and we got refund checks every year. But the Co-Op was small- to provide power in the mountains of Western Virginia. It was set up to provide electrical power to a region that did not have power. I think it was set up in the 1930s-1940s and it never went away. I think the reason that it was successful was that it was small, so 1) the big boys were not interested in it and 2)it was local, so if your rate went up without explanation you could vote the leadership out of a job pretty easily.