02.02.07

Bush Rehashes Plan to Raise Northwest Electricity Rates; Cantwell Calls Proposal Dead on Arrival

Senator vows to work with colleagues from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana to again defeat president’s backdoor rate hike

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Friday, after the president announced that he would once again attempt to raise Pacific Northwest electricity rates, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) vowed to work with other members of the region’s Congressional delegation to defeat the ill-advised proposal. The Bush Administration’s plan, included in its fiscal year 2008 budget proposal, would reverse the Bonneville Power Administration’s (BPA) long-standing system of using revenue from the sale of surplus power to lower electricity rates for Northwest consumers. This backdoor rate hike, which was defeated by Cantwell and her colleagues when it was proposed last year, would impose a significant rate increase on the vast majority of Northwest ratepayers.

“Year after year, the president has tried and failed to dismantle our region’s decades-old system of cost-based rates,” said Cantwell, a member of the Senate Energy Committee. “This year the president has added a new twist, calling for a conversation in the region on how to implement the decision he’s already made. If the president wants to talk, we’re happy to talk but the plan to make an end run on Congress is still the same, the result is still the same, and the bottom line is this is still wrong for Northwest families and businesses. This proposal to squeeze extra dollars out of the Pacific Northwest by dismantling a long-standing BPA policy is dead on arrival as far as I’m concerned.”

 Under federal law, BPA has the authority to sell surplus power to customers both inside and outside the Northwest. The revenue from surplus power sales is then used to lower BPA’s electricity rates throughout the Northwest. Currently, about 70 percent of the electricity consumed in the State of Washington is BPA power, sold at cost-based rates. The proposal included in the administration’s fiscal year 2008 budget would divert revenue from surplus power sales to the U.S. Treasury, preventing it from being used to make Northwest electricity rates more affordable.

Cantwell successfully defeated similar plans in both the 2006 and 2007 budget proposals. Under questioning in 2005, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman promised not to carry out similar proposals without the approval of Congress. This year’s rate hike plan, as well as last year’s, abandoned that promise yet again.

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