Cities are enough on the boards, they don’t need utility trading.

Senate Bill 165 is being considered to provide local election energy. Local Choice Energy allows municipalities, counties and tribal entities to take over utility services in their area. As President of the Albuquerque City Council, I can tell you from firsthand experience that the City of Albuquerque has no business running a service.

Anyone who thinks their local elected officials aren’t doing enough to solve housing, solve crime, or provide basic services doesn’t think it’s a good idea to add running utilities to their plates. Imagine if your utility grid suddenly competed for the same political priorities and funds as your well and playground.

When we talk to other cities that have gone down this path, it seems that many elected officials now regret their actions. In many states, costs are rising, not falling, as proponents say, and the programs rely on out-of-state energy brokers to keep the program running. Here’s the scary part – those out-of-state energy brokers aren’t regulated like our current utilities, which means the burden of regulation and negotiation is on the city, county or tribal entity. Most of our employees are already overtaxed, which means we’ll be in a difficult position to oversee another one.

Perhaps most important, we need a statewide approach to achieving our long-term climate goals. That requires some investment and negotiation, which large, controlled utilities can provide. I’m proud to have underwritten our state’s largest municipal solar project in 2018, and I’m proud of our mayors and councils for stepping up that game, the idea that a hundred different cities can achieve better results than we can. A few large utilities held to the highest standards by the Public Regulation Commission simply do not pass the reasonableness test.

Here at City Hall, we have enough on our plates and, moreover, voters have chosen to restructure the PRC to manage these energy priorities at the utility level. That new PRC, led by real energy policy experts whose ability to understand and act on the challenges posed by our climate and energy crisis have been vetted and confirmed only by the state Senate, has not even been given a chance. Let us know ourselves to do their work and to do our own.