Interview with Jim Hansen: PGE, Enron, and the Oregon Mutual Utility

Jeff Alworth

A couple of weeks ago, I referred to a newcomer in the PGE bid sweepstakes in my "Week in Review" post: Oregon Mutual Utility.  One of the founders of the group who advanced the bid, Jim Hansen, took exception to my post in the comments section.  He asserted that it would be wise for me to keep my "rhetoric to a minimum," and began detailing why Oregon Mutual Utility is good for Portland.  Hey, this is a blog--we don't keep our rhetoric to a minimum. In fact, we try to fan the flames of ever more rhetoric. 

To that end, I posed several pointed questions to Jim, and he kindly responded.  You may pose your own questions in the comments section--I believe Jim will be happy to answer them.

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Jeff Alworth: Okay, let's start from the top.  Your group, Oregon Mutual Utility, has a new-fangled privately-run, publicly-monitored cooperative plan that even one of your founders called "unknown on the face of the earth." Why would Enron-stung citizens want such a thing?

Jim Hansen: We’ve talked with hundreds of PGE customers who aren’t comfortable with ‘old-fangled’ solutions and leadership. ‘Oregon – we love dreamers.’ ‘Things look different here.’ PGE built the first ever alternating current transmission line (now the world standard) on June 4, 1889. We have a tradition of doing new things. By way, Enron and Texas Pacific Group’s ideas are really OLD ideas, Franklin Roosevelt dealt with the likes of Enron seventy years ago. How soon we forget.

Who are you guys and what do you stand to gain?

We’re mostly all long time Oregonians and PGE customers. First, we’d like the satisfaction of doing something truly great for our community. We hope to be paid for our time and creativity. I say ‘hope,’ because we will need to apply to the PUC for any fee or payment, this will all be disclosed to the public and open for public discussion,  and then the PUC will need to approve it. I hope the public feels we’ve added real value. We’d prefer to be paid at the end of any deal, after all the benefits to customers have been realized.

The plan you propose is called "securitization" and involves placing a tariff on each customer's monthly bill--which covers the debt your group incurs buying PGE.  Why should we pay for you to buy PGE?

You shouldn’t pay for us to buy PGE. I certainly wouldn’t. Oregon Mutual is not buying PGE. PGE customers will buy PGE and they will own PGE.

Probably a better question is, ‘why should customers let Oregon Mutual Utility negotiate with Enron to buy PGE  for them?’ The answer to that questions is that we have the expertise and advisors and are ready to do it right now. Our plan, including the debt securitization, has cost advantages over  either a state or city purchase.

It seems like your group's main selling point is that this will guarantee local control over PGE.  So why not back the City, which has been working on a plan for months?

We have been working for months with our financial, regulatory, and legal advisors. We have built a comprehensive financial model. If the criterion for ‘backing’ some group was the amount of work done, then everyone should ‘back’ us as the City hasn’t even selected their financial advisor. The real advantage to our proposal is that after six months of work we now believe we have cost advantages over all the other proposals, and that a customer owned mutual utility will generate safe, reliable power with stable and competitive rates.

You are a well-known backer of and donor to Kevin Mannix.  On your website, you trumpet that your group will be "respectful of our [Oregon's] culture," which seems to echo the fears that fuel GOP efforts to back a state proposal--they worry what revolution enviro Portlanders might attempt with their own utility.  So why should we trust a plan that seems to be hatched by conservatives partly to foil lefty Stumptowners from owning and greening their own utility?

I’m a much more well-known backer now that it appears here! Jeff, I really think Kevin Mannix is great person. I  financially supported BOTH Ron Saxton and Jack Roberts and was hugely disappointed when Kevin won the Republican primary because I am a major league ‘left wing’ Republican.  But I met Kevin in person and my opinion changed. I flew Kevin all over the State in my plane and campaigned for him and got to know him well. I really like him. He’s the smartest nicest guy I know. (Sorry about using this Blog as a crude place to grandstand, but Jeff, this is your fault for dishing the ‘question’ up to me!)

Some of my Oregon Mutual Utility Development partners, however,  are SCREAMING liberals. I’m glad you haven’t figured out all the links our group has to well known Democrats!  A good portion of us are Independent, (I think, as we don’t talk much about politics.) However, we all love working on this project together which is so very typical of Oregon culture. As for this ‘trumpeting ‘ and ‘echoing the fears’ issue you have, I’ve found that when people stop acting like concrete walls the echoes die down. I hope this works for you!  Sorry to put the hammer down, but bias an  innuendo aren’t very progressive things...

I was born and raised here and I’m about as Oregonian as you can get. And I’m personally really into green energy, conservation, geothermal, fuel cells and distributed energy. One of our team members was PacifiCorp’s first marketer of ‘green power’ and is designing Willamette Week’s new ‘green building’. But other of our members are NOT into green power at all and REALLY like coal. But how green PGE will be or not be is NOT our call at all, and I hope, not Erik Sten’s or the Governor’s either. We won’t manage or run PGE. Green power choices should be PGE customer’s call voiced through the board they elect. A mutual PGE’s customers will still pay the 3% special purpose fee. We do think that the financial structure of a mutual company will entirely change the way financial people and engineers look at energy efficiency, distributed power, co-generation, and ‘green’ investments because the ‘soft benefits’ ( employment, CO2 reduction, local taxation, reduction on foreign oil, controlling our own energy destiny, etc.) flow to the investors who are the customers. So we think a mutual company will best reflect the culture of the customers, about half the population of Oregon.

  • iggi (unverified)
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    "You shouldn’t pay for us to buy PGE. I certainly wouldn’t. Oregon Mutual is not buying PGE. PGE customers will buy PGE and they will own PGE."

    uhm, so you are buying PGE out of the goodness of your (collective) heart and passing it on to Oregonians?

    sorry, i read the interview and i still don't understand your model. what sort of money is OMU makin off this deal? i assume you're not doing it for free...particularly after the good people of Oregon pay you back for the purchase.

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    According to this Oregonian article, bid organizers stand to earn $2-14 million if they actually buy PGE. Which is presumably more than they're putting in.

  • Javier O. Sanchez (unverified)
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    Pretty shaky and non-convincing--I think the power of the big greasy $$$ is the true incentive for this group.

    His substantiation for not getting behind the city is almost as hilarious as the other "screaming liberals" who comprise the team--he seems pretty vague about who else is involved, save the guy who is building the new green Willamette Week building (does that qualify him as "liberal"?)

    I say "BOO" on Oregon Mutual Utility and double "BOO-BOO" on Mannix as the "smartest, nicest guy I know"--YIKES!

  • iggi (unverified)
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    i'm willing to give Mannix the benefit of the doubt...have him meet me at Dante's for a drink.

  • Bob Jenks, Citizens' Utility Board (unverified)
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    The promotional materials of Oregon Mutual Utility raise more questions than they answer.

    OMU claims that it will be owned by customers but still regulated by the Oregon Public Utility Commission. This is supposed to reassure us, but how does the PUC regulate a mutual utility? The basis of PUC regulation is its ability to refuse to put charges onto customers. If the utility makes imprudent decisions, the PUC can force shareholders to pay for those decisions. The PUC does not have authority to preapprove most utility decisions. It waits until after a decision to decide who pays for it: customers or shareholders. Under OMU proposal, because there are no shareholders, the PUC must find that customers are responsible for everything. PUC regulation is meaningless.

    Don't worry, we are told, customers will elect the Mutual Utility's Board of Directors. However, the first Board is being chosen by the founders -- who have a conflict of interest since they expect the Board of Directors to approve their million dollar fees. In the future, the Board of Directors will have a Board Nominating Committee to choose who is nominated for the Board. Elections do not provide accountability without the ability to nominate, but that power rests first with the founders, then with the Board of Directors.

    Lower rates? Public ownership, through the City of Portland or a State Power Authority, would allow new investment in infrastructure (the primary purpose of a utility) to be done with tax exempt bonds -- that's the lowest financing rate you can get. In addition, City or State ownership would avoid income taxes. Based on the information that OMU has provided to date, claims that they can provide lower rates than public ownership seem dubious.

    The City of Portland has spent months working with stakeholders (customer groups and others) to collaboratively solve issues related to governance and accountability. They have shared their financial analysis. Sponsors of State Power Authority legislation began their efforts by calling in the same stakeholders to work on those issues. From a customer viewpoint, the Citizens Utility Board believes these two public ownership models are more viable, more accountable and will provide far more cost savings over time.

    We spend the last 18 months fighting Texas Pacific’s attempt to purchase PGE. Now that we’ve won that battle, we have an exciting opportunity to form a true regional, publicly-owned and publicly-accountable utility. For more information about CUB’s analysis of options for PGE go to our website (www.oregoncub.org):

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    Iggi, Let me set up a time for you to meet Kevin Mannix. Thanks for Keeping an open mind. I've been around Oregon politics for some time and I think he has it all. Call me 503.307.3164. Little known fact: Kevin was a Democratic Representative until 1996? or so (I think) for grins check this out.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    Iggi, again, let me respond to:

    uhm, so you are buying PGE out of the goodness of your (collective) heart and passing it on to Oregonians?

    We worked for several months not knowing the answer to this quesiton. We really didnt' know if we were a research group, charitable group, or a political organization. But yes. I was born here, and have done quite well and want to leave my campsite cleaner than I found it, like any true green blooded Oregonian. Also, I was pissed about what was going on with TPG and it didn't take a rocket science degree to figure out that a stock distribution was any better.

    I went through a similar situation when I was a stock broker -- where a pending sale of our company failed and we didn't have a real owner except creditors for three years. It was one of the most miserable periods of my life.

    You wrote: sorry, i read the interview and i still don't understand your model. what sort of money is OMU makin off this deal? i assume you're not doing it for free...particularly after the good people of Oregon pay you back for the purchase.

    We may indeed be doing if for free... If the City or Oregon Community Power or a distribution happens it's very likely I won't get paid. I have at this moment invested $13,055.00 in this personally and I would loose it. I am working full time on this since August. Many 20 hour days and one 22 hour Saturday.

    We have decided that we are indeed a business, partially because it was the best structure for raising the money we'd need and we realized we would need significant seed investment. Acquisition of this size generally burn about $400,000 per month or so. Just look at SRP, NWNG or TPG for some examples...

    Yes, I think we should get paid. To do so we'll need to apply to the PUC. and this will all be transparnent and everyone will know. We really don't have an idea or whether the PUC will approve any, some or all of what we ask for.

    Many of our team really can't work for free and most are holding down day jobs that they would need to quit in order to take this to the next level.

    The model is: we are an agent helping PGE customers buy PGE so the customers can own it and run it. Then we are gone. We aren't running PGE. The customer's board will. We hope to make more money than we spend (a profit) by doing this in Portland and for many other water, electric and telecomm customers around the nation.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    Jeff:

    I feel bad about the Oregonian (mis) "quote." We really don't know what we will ask for, or be able to ask for. And, indeed, the $2mm to $14mm figure is a better estimate of cost rather than what we will make.

    It would be great if we could get close to the lower figure. This will be possible if CUB, ICNU, BOMA and others quickly unite around stipulations that will allow the PUC to rapidly approve a deal. If this drags on it will cost more toward the high end.

    Another thing we need to recognize: many cost factors are beyond our control. My real concern on this deal is that it will take the City, State or anyone esle a year to close and interest rates will go up 200 basis points and you can kiss Sten's or anyone else's 10% reduction goodbye. Whoever does this needs to close it immediately.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    Javier

    Get a fricking life. There is none so blind as he who will not see. You are a prisonor of your own perception.

    Opportunity is the difference between reality and perception. If you knew this maybe you be in a financial position where you could really help your community and bust your ass like I am.

    Our team is on our website.

    We aren't going to work this out here. If you want to meet me we can go out for a bike ride, or jamba juice, or arc a turn on the Mtn. or something. 503.307.3164.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    Bob Jenks:

    Thank you so much for sending the 34 great questions Wednesday afternoon to our group. Your obviously did a tremendous amount of work to assemble this and it is appreciated.

    We are working on our responses and a list of questions for you as well. Also we will be probably be sending two teams your direction, but we are jammed for time right now, so it wil probably be mid next week...

    I'll take a stab at one of your questions above as it's almost 1:00 am and I've starting to fade:

    You have questions concerning the customer's ability to finance a pruchase cheaper than the City or State Proposal. A securitized debt should accomplish this. We have a financial model that took six months to develop and we will show you this when we get together. The state proposal will finance the purchase entirely with revenue bonds not backed by the State. Even though these are tax- free, the entire traunch won't recieve a AAA rating... the rates on securitizations are just a few basis points over Treasuries. Over $30 billion in securitizations have been done in the last five years. So we think this is a cost advantage, but will look forward to seeing your work as well.

    Well, too tired.

    Thanks again for your frank letter. And great questions.

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    I feel bad about the Oregonian (mis) "quote." We really don't know what we will ask for, or be able to ask for. And, indeed, the $2mm to $14mm figure is a better estimate of cost rather than what we will make.

    Jim, whether or not you make two or 14 million on the deal, it's that disclosure thing to mention that you're not doing this purely altruistically. You may not be trying to soak PGE customers, but that doesn't mean you're thinking only of their benefit.

  • afs (unverified)
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    Jim Hansen, OMU... I'm concerned about the ratio of rhetoric to facts in these responses. It's my experience in recent times, when those on the right are trying to convince people to do something that is against their better interest, they respond with lots of flowery rhetoric, and keep the facts to a minimum. Look at the Social Security privatization discussion nationally. Bush beats the media over the head with "flowery rhetoric" indicating general anxiety of Social Secuity running out of money. Nowhere is the two trillion dollars the Bush privatization proposal would drive the country into debt mentioned. Nowhere is the fact that private accounts actually do nothing to actually raise a single dollar in the Social Security trust fund. The mass media isn't holding the Bush administration responsible for not providing those facts to the American people, either.

    That style of business might work in Texas, but not here in Oregon. There's an abundance of flowery rhetoric, and few facts or evidence in the responses that indicate OMU would be a good idea. I don't need to hear that "PGE built the first ever alternating current transmission line (now the world standard) on June 4, 1889. We have a tradition of doing new things." That's flowery rhetoric. That's not a response to the question asked. It's a distraction from the question asked. I don't want to hear how long it took you to produce your financial model. That's a distraction. I want to hear the exact numbers. I want to be shown in great detail a side-by-side comparison of the plans being offered. I want to see the exact details of the different types of financing. I want to see specific figures about who is getting what consulting and lobbying fees.

    I guess what I'm saying is, a few paragraphs of public relations staff, poll-tested language doesn't help anything. I guess it's your bad luck to be making this offer at the same time such an obvious boondoggle like Social Security privatization is being pursued. Call it "once bitten-twice shy" anxiety. What needs to be done is a huge pdf file of all the specifics of the offer needs to be posted so we can go through all the details once the exact final bid numbers are known. Don't show us preliminary figures. Those are as valid as the first price quoted on a new fighter jet contract before all the cost over-runs begin. We're used to the cost-overrun game of low-balling a bid with the expectation that you can double the price after the contact is signed. We are not going to pay for a cost-overrun on this. You guys are. We need the final numbers and they need to be legally certified as the exact same numbers as the bid that will be offered. You guys need to agree to be financially responsible for all costs over and above the certified numbers you provide. Get a link up here for the pdf file with the specifics, let us go through the exact numbers, and then come back after we've had a chance to go through all those numbers.

  • JimPortlandOR (unverified)
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    If the customers are to end up being the owners, why is the board of directors not elected by the customers?

    A self-perpetuating board, selected by the interim board, sounds very prone to anti-consumer actions.

    The key decisions in running a utility are on-going maintenance spending, capital investments, and current rates and rate structure. How can the board be held responsible for these decisions if there is no way to choose directors who would head in a different direction if things aren't managed well.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    AFS: Sorry about alleged rhetoric ratio. Read everything at our website and tell me what's missing. Jeff Alworth made me promise to be brief so I won't discuss the solution to Social Security.

    There's no way to know now what will be spent on this project or what we will make. We think that if we keep expenses low relative to other projects of this size that people like you will support us when we go to the PUC to try to recover costs and make a profit. So we'll get you good figures if and when we make a offer. Through mid Feb I had spent $3,055. Now we are start spending about $400,000/ month, plus or minus about half that amount...

    I agree with you that we need good accounting. We are doing all the typical auditing things, but I agree with you, after Enron, Woldcomm, bad priests, and Martha, anyone who tries to do anything great is regarded suspect. You have some suggestions that seem pretty reasonable. Will this really work? Is it enough? Or will people still be looking for devils that never existed? And a PR mess will exist even if this turns out to be a far better proposal than the City or State?

    The Sun and Inquirer do pretty well, even though I think Elvis is really dead.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    For JimPortlandOR:

    Have you checked out our paper on governance. Many of the details will need to be ironed out in a public process after Enron accepts our bid and before we apply to the PUC. We'll need your input on this.

    The Board of PGE will be selected at annual meetings of the owner-customers. If they owner-customers don't like the direction of the company they can elect somebody else.

    Our group is selecting the board for the first year ( or less depending on what you and other customers want to do and what the PUC accepts) because we plan to make an offer very soon. Our fear is that the City or State will still be selecting directors or designing the slection process but the shares will already be long gone.

    Enron won't make the mistake of waiting to begin the process of distribution to creditors like they did with TPG. I can't image they will cut a deal with the City or the State or us or anyone without concurrently moving quickly to distribute as early as October of this year, April of next year at the latest.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    To Jeff Alworth: I am sorry buddy, but I am really not tracking with you here:

    You said:

    Jim, whether or not you make two or 14 million on the deal, it's that disclosure thing to mention that you're not doing this purely altruistically. You may not be trying to soak PGE customers, but that doesn't mean you're thinking only of their benefit.

    Jeff, are you trying to say that we aren't disclosing something? If so, where are you getting this from? Is there something on the Website that you feel represents that we are working for free and not trying to get some kind of fee when we are trying to get paid somehow? Please let me know and I will change it.

    Is there a conflict between us making money and doing the best thing for PGE customers? We'd love to set this up where the more money we make for PGE customers (or the more we save PGE customer in rates), the more we would make. I'd be pretty happy with that deal in my role as a PGE customer or in my role as founder of OMUD.

    Do get back to me, because I'm really not tracking. And if there's something wrong with the website, let me know.

    Also, I don't write the Oregonian. I've been disappointed with the Oregonian since I lost my job as an Oregon Journal paperboy.

    Soon we will be putting out our story in purchased advertising in the papers. It seems this is the only way (besides your Blog) to get a clear message out. Maybe you could reveiw this for us before it goes to print. You can't have too many eyes reviewing communications because everyone sees somthing different, and people may take something the wrong way or out of context. Call me 503.307.3164.

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    Jeff, are you trying to say that we aren't disclosing something?

    No, not at all. I forget why I was inspired to say that, but something up thread (which I don't want to spend the time locating) inclined me just to point out that there is a profit motive for your team. You've been up-front about that all along.

  • Lea (unverified)
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    Bob Jenks writes:

    In the future, the Board of Directors will have a Board Nominating Committee to choose who is nominated for the Board. Elections do not provide accountability without the ability to nominate, but that power rests first with the founders, then with the Board of Directors.

    Jim, this is a point that still concerns me. I'm willing to cede that timing issues may make an appointed initial BoD more useful, but I still dislike the thought of the Board picking its own successors. Public elections of Directors mean nothing if the BoD picks the field from which we select.

    There are arguments for the ability of the BoD to nominate candidates, but the public must also have that ability. Otherwise, it becomes nothing less than a monarchy which reproduces by asexual means.

  • Ross Olson (unverified)
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    I just want to thank Jim Hansen for being open and frank, even in the face of various flames in this discussion. If I believe everything or not, agree with the direction or not, it is UTTERLY refreshing to hear a real person talk about these things rather than some random voice box saying "No comment" or worse, speaking only through press releases. Thanks Jim.

  • Jay (unverified)
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    Keep up the good fight Jim! PGE coutomers as owner, far far better that the nuts that are running Portland.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    To Lea:

    Thanks for the great comment about asexual reproduction. This is a valid criticism and a great way of describing it. It's a two edged sword: if everything is going well, great! Let each generation look identical to the last. The problem is, what happens when things go wrong? Need we look any farther than Enron?

    Our suggestion for setting the Board up this way was that we want to start with the right people and the right values (and we gave a lot of thought to both) and really start out with the right cells to clone. So yes we do want to favor the asexual thing.

    Where I think we need help is, how do we throw the bastards out? How can we make the process easier to boot a board that is no longer dedicated to our core values of service, responsibility, transparency, ownership leadership and stewardship.

    I'd like to have you or Bob Jenks look at our governance pieceand suggest how we could have a better respresentation of both sexual and asexual reproduction. Or maybe some kind of automatic morphing from a bad board to a good board. I'd be interested in this because we REALLY don't want to repeat Enron, Worldcom, etc, etc. etc.

    But there are asexual boards that work. Johnson and Johnson, Southwest Airlines... So what is the answer?

    Also, today we released our first stem cells, I mean board members: Kay Stepp, Mike Thorne, and Mike Rippett. I just notice that our webmaster doesn't have the press release up this minute but it should be here soon.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    Ross Olson wrote: I just want to thank Jim Hansen for being open and frank.

    Thanks, Ross this really means a lot. It's been a lot of work and most of the time I take a lot of arrows. There's a lot of forces that try to put us all back in the box. But I'm too much of an Oregonian (loudmouth!) to be kept there...

    Love ya and thanks again.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    Jay, you wrote: Keep up the good fight Jim! PGE coutomers as owner, far far better that the nuts that are running Portland.

    I agree that customer ownership is a great idea. But 'the City that works', by and large does. Frankly, if it hadn't been for Eric Sten, I wouldn't have done this. Eric really called it right that some kind of public model makes more sense than TPG or a creditor distribution.

    I worked with Eric on the North Macadam project. He was always a straight shooter and I've met with him twice about OMU. I think Erik can support our plan, but he can't risk just going away because we have a good idea.

    So it's wise that all three sisters get dressed up pretty. We should not start slinging mud at each other. The prince has accepted an invitation to another ball and the last time he was in town, he got tarred and feathered. Also, if he does marry one of the three beautiful maidens, the other two will be sisters-in-law for years to come...

    So thank you Ryan Deckert and Erik Sten for showing leadership and trying to solve a very complex problem.

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    To Jeff Alworth:

    We really didn't know when we started this effort what we were going to be: a non-profit, a research group, a foundation, a for profit, or a co-op? A church? But we (Oregon Mutual Utility Development) are squarely on the for-profit side now. This has become much more time consuming that I ever imagined. (The mutual PGE will be a not-for profit and OMU won't own or control any of it, it will be owned by the customers)

    The real profit for our group, if there is one, will come from what we will do next. As I mentioned before, OMU is in the business of helping customers buy their utility. If we write the play-book here, even if we don't make much money, we can do this elsewhere and probably can.

    Try Memphis, TN. The City is basically broke. They have a terrible credit rating, no way to refinance or make needed investments. The city owns a great, well-run electric, water and gas utility. Politicians have suggested selling the utility in the past. (This is similar to running for governor in Oregon on the 'I want a sales tax and self-serve gas' platform.) Who wants to sell the utility to an investor owned utility? Worse yet, what if a company in Georgia bought it? ACK!

    How about this: Oregon Mutual Utility helps Memphis customers buy the utility and it keeps its same management. The customers create a board and run the utility. The customers borrow at 4.75% or thereabouts, and pays off all the city's debt. The city becomes a AAA credit and can enter the capital markets for the needed infrastructure improvements! (And, of course, the firm of Duke and Duke (us) makes a small fee!

    There are probably fifty opportunities around the country with odd issues like this where a PUD, Coop, IOU or municipal doesn't make sense. If we make some serious money doing this we are committed to spending all that profit here in Oregon! A win-win!

  • Jim Hansen (unverified)
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    Rumor control/ gossip/ can anyone track this down for me?

    Heard a credible rumor that PG&E, the recovering from bankrupt utility in Arnold's state, is thinking of buying PGE. Would not have to change the name much. There's a new CEO with plenty of cash, he's got investment banking background and wants to make his mark.

    <h2>There could be some synergy. Shipping power to Calfornia, PGE's transmission capability. Oregon's been largely Californicated anyway. Any own hear anyting about this one? Jenks, you there?</h2>

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