Should Central Maine Power be audited? Absolutely. Privately held monopolies always seek to increase their profits at the expense of consumers. CMP is no more a Maine company that British Petroleum or Walmart. It is part of Avangrid, which is owned by Iberdrola, a foreign company that cares nothing about Mainers except to extract as much wealth from us as possible, as is with its other monopolies around the world.

According to Salary.com, CMP President Sarah Burns is compensated $1.3 million annually. There are plenty of qualified people who would manage CMP for a tenth of what she made, so why does Iberdrola pay so well? To enable and pursue their monopolistic agenda.

Some say, “Oh well, that’s just the way it is.” However, we can push back against Iberdrola by demanding greater incentives for alternative energy produced locally and in homes. We can demand that the state’s renewable energy portfolio be increased greatly like other states have and require CMP to pay fairly for the energy produced by us. We can create cooperatives to help each other install solar and wind power in our communities.

Maine does have two monopolies that represent their customer/owners: the Eastern Maine Electric Cooperative in Calais and the Swan’s Island Electric Cooperative. They are democratically owned and directed by the customers who use the electricity. Electric cooperatives nationwide provide better service at lower cost.

We can sit back and let austerity-loving, big corporation-admiring, anti-government leaders make the decisions for us, or we can push back against Iberdrola, work to become independent of that monopoly, and vote for leaders willing to stand up to big money.

Brad Sherwood

Waterville

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