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Aqua Illinois and Illinois American Water sought tens of
millions of dollars in rate hikes from consumers last year. The
Illinois Commerce Commission reduced Aqua’s increase by 43% to
just under $11 million in November. The ICC dropped Illinois
American’s hike by 30% to $110 million the next month.
State Sen. Laura Murphy, D-Des Plaines, filed Senate Bill 75 in
an effort to curb such moves by private utilities.
Citizens Utility Board Director of Governmental Affairs Bryan
McDaniel called the rate hikes “insane” and urged support for SB
75, which would require private water utility shareholders to
pay more than consumers for new acquisitions by the utilities.
“They’re trying to buy up as many systems as they can, and when
they buy a system, they recover the entire cost of the system
from their existing customers,” McDaniel told The Center Square.
CUB is also targeting an extra charge water utilities pass on to
consumers.
“The other part of that bill would end a surcharge on water
bills that allows the water utility to spend money more quickly
and thus raise rates more quickly. This is called the QIP
surcharge: Qualifying Infrastructure Plant surcharge,” McDaniel
said.
He said monopolies should not be telling consumers what the true
cost of water is, adding that public water is usually cheaper
than private water.
“In a public system, you’re not paying utilities’ profits, which
they usually want a profit margin around 9 to 10%. You’re not
paying utilities’ acquisition costs, which were $410 million and
counting over the last ten years in Illinois in systems they
bought, and you’re not paying utilities’ taxes on their
earnings, which gets recovered from ratepayers, too,” McDaniel
said.
SB 75 was assigned to the Energy and Public Utilities Committee.
Five state senators have signed on as co-sponsors.
Kevin Bessler contributed to this story. |
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