Maine’s profit-hungry utilities CMP and Versant know that the Pine Tree Power Company would save Mainers money and make our electric grid more reliable. As a consumer-owned, non-profit enterprise with a board of directors elected and run entirely by Mainers, Pine Tree Power is better able to afford good pay for its workers, lower rates for customers, and the resources needed to strengthen and green our grid. Meanwhile, all the money it earns and spends stays in the state. It doesn’t get much better than that. That’s why CMP’s parent company Avangrid is spinning a multi-million-dollar web of lies, hiding behind an organization called Maine Affordable Energy, trying to trick voters into rejecting the deal.

Avangrid wants to convince folks that “the government” would be running our electrical grid under Pine Tree Power. Well, I have some news: CMP and Versant are already government-owned. Two of the largest shareholders of Avangrid’s parent company (Iberdrola, a Spanish company) are “the governments” of Qatar and Norway, and Versant is entirely owned by the city of Calgary in Canada. Whatever your thoughts about government-controlled or investor-owned utilities, Pine Tree Power is neither. Its only owners will be its customers.

CMP is literally the worst-ranked utility in the country, and Versant is third worst. Thanks to their mishandling of our grid, Maine has more power outages than any other U.S. state. CMP and Versant both want to increase rates again this year, this time by over 30%. They are bad at their jobs, and they are demanding a raise. That’s not how things work. This is a no-brainer, folks. I say we collectively fire them and have Mainers take over instead. That’s what we’ll do when we vote yes to create the Pine Tree Power Company in Maine this November.

 

Patrick Loftus

Litchfield

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