Blogging Melodrama

Washington is trying to do to us.... AGAIN...In WA state!

Representative Jay Inslee sent me an update on something Washington is trying to do to us.... AGAIN here in Washington state! Read his letter to me and then what I replied. I hope if your a fellow Washingtonian you'll write your representatives and fight this before our state becomes another California; so deep in debt that a hole would look good.



Dear Ms Myers:
I wanted pass along to you the latest developments on a proposal in Washington, D.C. to raise electricity rates on Washington State consumers. As you may know, the President's budget proposes that the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), supplier of 60% of the power in Washington State, raise its rates up to 20% a year for the next four or five years.

BPA, as you may know, is the federal agency that sells the power from the Columbia River Power System, a network of hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River. BPA is a nonprofit entity, selling the power at the cost it takes to generate and transmit it, without adding charges. The Administration's proposal would have BPA raise its rates on us to generate profits that would go back to the U.S. Treasury in Washington, D.C.

Most of Washington State's public utilities receive a large percentage of their energy from the BPA, including the Snohomish County PUD (80%), Tacoma Power (60%) and Seattle City Light (35%). In addition, consumers served by utilities such as Puget Sound Energy also receive an energy price reduction because of BPA. Ultimately, all these utilities would be forced to pass on the rate increases to consumers, resulting in much higher electricity bills to heat and power your home. Many of us in the Northwest are still feeling the effects of the skyrocketing of energy rates and the loss of 105,000 jobs during the 2000-2001 energy crisis.

The Bush Administration's proposal to require BPA to sell its energy at market-based rates rather than cost-based rates, according to a McCullough Research report, would cost the Northwest 40,000 to 60,000 jobs over the next five years, a hit our region can scarcely afford at a time when we are just beginning to recover five years after the West Coast energy crisis. For this reason, all of Washington State's representatives in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, are united in opposing this proposal.

This past Sunday, I met with employees and management at the Nucor Steel Mill, Seattle City Light's largest customer and part of the largest steel producer in the United States, who saw their energy rates increase 59 percent as a result of the energy crisis. Nucor's electric rates at their Seattle mill are the highest of all of their 16 mills across 14 states, highlighting the continued effects of the energy crisis. The Bonneville Power Administration's low cost-based energy rates are primarily responsible for bringing in much of Washington State's industry, from Boeing, various primary metal industries such as Nucor, to paper industries such as Kimberly-Clark and Weyerhauser. Unfortunately, the energy crisis has already removed that advantage for these industries. Raising BPA's rates by 20% a year for the next four or five years at this critical juncture would harm the health of Washington State's job market, a proposition that all of Washington State's representatives are united in opposing.

I recently questioned new Department of Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman during a Energy and Commerce Committee hearing about the rationality of the Administration's proposed rate increases for the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). Secretary Bodman suggested that the legacy of charging cost-based rates to their Northwest consumers is subsidized by the American taxpayer. This characterization of BPA is inaccurate: BPA customers repay all of BPA's costs including paying interest on Bonneville's old, appropriated debt and any funds borrowed from the U.S. Treasury.

While I am honored that the Secretary could spend time answering my questions on Bonneville power rates, I disagree with the Secretary's idea that the federal government is somehow subsidizing power consumers in the Northwest when the BPA charges us cost-based rates. Bonneville, which produces power overwhelmingly with publicly owned resources, pays back every cent of its costs to the federal treasury. We do not expect government run libraries to make a profit and we do not expect government run Power Marketing Administration to turn a profit either. The current proposal aimed at changing the BPA rates is illegal and I will continue to oppose the Administration's attempts to impose the equivalent of a very large energy tax on Washington State consumers.

Please rest assured that as a Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, I will continue to oppose the attempt to raise the BPA's cost-based rates, ensuring our region's continued economic competitiveness as well as the health of our job market.

As a service to my constituents, I maintain a website which contains valuable resources and information on Congressional activities. Please feel free to visit the website at http://www.house.gov/inslee for information on recent issues and to learn more about the services my office provides. If you have not done so already, please visit http://www.house.gov/inslee/signup.htm to subscribe to my e-mail updates.

I encourage you to contact me via email, telephone, or fax, because security measures are causing House offices to experience delays in receiving postal mail. My email address is: Jay.Inslee@mail.house.gov. Please be sure to include your full name and address, including your zip code, in your message.

The following is my reply to this letter:

posted by Jan myrz @ 6:10 PM