Power Agency Sale May Backfire Co-Op Official Warns Decision May Set Stage For Sale Of Bpa

Northwest representatives who voted to sell a federal power-marketing agency serving the South could be haunted by their decision, the executive vice president of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association said Wednesday.

Glenn English said the sale of the Southeast Power Administration, if carried out, could trigger a series of auctions that might eventually include the Bonneville Power Administration.

The sale of one agency, he said, eliminates support for the three others among representatives and senators who no longer have an interest in preserving the federal government’s power generation and transmission facilities.

He called Republican Reps. Helen Chenoweth of Idaho and Richard “Doc” Hastings and Linda Smith of Washington “backstabbers” for letting the agenda of the party’s leadership get in the way of the best interests of their constituents.

Montana Rep. Pat Williams, a Democrat, opposed the sale.

The four Northwest representatives are members of the House Resource Committee, which voted 19-18 on Sept. 19 to sell Southeast Power.

In a statement issued by his office Wednesday, Hastings said the committee would have missed its budget target had members not approved the sale.

Failure to do so, he said, would have shifted responsibility for making the needed cuts to the House Budget Committee, where many representatives support the privatization of Bonneville.

“The fact that we were able to keep Bonneville off the table is a major victory,” Hastings said.

A Chenoweth spokesperson agreed, adding that the region’s representatives were committed to resolving Bonneville’s unique problems.

In the meantime, English said, private power companies will be buying up SEPA’s dams and other assets, then hiking rates to pay for them.

Although the short-term result might be a revenue gain for a Congress struggling to balance the budget in seven years, the transaction amounts to a back-door tax increase in the areas once served by the federal facilities, he said.

“It comes down to a contest between Wall Street and Main Street,” said English, who was in Spokane to speak to a regional convention of the NRECA.

He said the association had been willing to go along with the sale of SEPA’s assets as long as there would be no rate impacts.

But in the scramble for revenues - and in response to pressure from GOP leadership the sale became an auction, and the potential for major rate hikes emerged, he said.

English said SEPA returns about $300 million to the federal government annually, $200 million of that in debt service.

A sale of the agency’s generating plants would raise about $1.4 billion over five years, he estimated, but customer rate hikes would continue long afterward.

The sale is part of a budget package now before the full House of Representatives.

The provision is not included in the Senate version.

, DataTimes