UTILITY TALE OF TWO CITIES
McMillin, Miles
Public Power News Utility Tale Of Two Cities By MILES McMILLIN = ASPLENDID clinical study of utility interests in action against municipal acquisition proceedings is provided by two current...
...Public Power News Utility Tale Of Two Cities By MILES McMILLIN = ASPLENDID clinical study of utility interests in action against municipal acquisition proceedings is provided by two current cases, one in Tuscon, Ariz., and the other in Madison, Wis...
...Both cases found their origins in divestment orders against the parent companies by the Securities nnd Exchange Commission...
...Groups of businessmen, losing sight of the benefits they could realize from public ownership, were swung into line by the powerful utility propaganda...
...On the contrary it has stubbornly refused to discuss the matter or cooperate in any way...
...They made a counter-offer of $8,500,000...
...In both cities there are two newspapers...
...They could come to no agreement and the fight was on...
...Hell, as the rugged Arizonaris say, busted loose...
...Pro-utility aldermen on the city council fought desperately but futilely to prevent the people of Madison from having an opportunity to voice their sentiments in a referendum...
...It arrogantly denied the city permission to make a survey of its property evaluation...
...To people interested in the power issue Tuscon and Madison are fine laboratory specimens...
...Then something happened...
...No one mentioned the "un-American" aspects of public ownership...
...Herman Berlowe, and comparing them with my own observations on what is presently transpiring in Madison, I am amazed at the paralellism of the utility lines...
...The little city of South Tuscon announced that it was beginning negotiations to purchase the utility property...
...It has not, however, gone to the ridiculous extremes of the pro-utility Madison paper which recently claimed that this purely local issue was originally raised by a Progressive leader to be used as an issue in a state-wide gubernatorial election...
...These issues are obscured as much as possible by side issues, personality assassination, and other devices long ago perfected by the power trust for just such use...
...They stubbornly refuse to discuss the basic issue—the money to be saved in the large profits being siphoned out of the cities by absentee owners, in rate reductions, and in taxes...
...The business men who had been sucked in by the Citizen announced that they were for another vote...
...Overnight public ownership became a "communist" doctrine...
...In Madison there has been no offer on the part of the utility to sell...
...Basic Issue Ignored The tactics of the two pro-utility papers are strikingly alike...
...Here was a magnificent opportunity, said the power trusters, for the city to better itself...
...In the referendum the proposal was defeated by 258 votes...
...The Arizona Star, like the Capital Times in Madison, has taken the side of the local citizens...
...In looking over the clippings and comments sent to me from Tuscon by Mr...
...They split on the issue...
...In two days enough signatures were acquired and the city council accepted the petition for another referendum...
...Tuscon, for instance, has already had its referendum while the Wisconsin city, whose residents can well benefit from Tus-con's example,~will not hold its referendum until April...
...For example, the nearest the Tuscon Citizen came to discussing comparative rates was when it dug up 100 publicly owned systems out of the thousands in this "country whose rates were higher than those c'larged by the Tuscon Gas, Electric Light and Power Company...
...The referendum was held and Tuscon voted to acquire the utility property...
...Something Happened The city fathers, however, thought the price too high...
...In Tuscon the Citizen has taken a pro-utility stand, as has the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison...
...They are especially interesting because of their remarkable similarity, differing only in a few minor details and the stage to which the proceedings have been carried in the respective cities...
...When proceedings first got underway in Tuscon, the parent holding company, realizing that the SEC would soon require it to let go of the operating company anyway, offered the utility to the city for $9,-100,000...
Vol. 8 • March 1944 • No. 10
