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NE Video Special: Electric rates likely to rise; lame ducks likely to vote

By   /   December 12, 2012  /   6 Comments

Joe Jordan | Nebraska Watchdog

Don’t expect two lame duck members of the Omaha Public Power District to stand in the way of the utility’s latest rate hike which is likely to be approved tomorrow.

LAME DUCK: Chairman N.P. “Sandy” Dodge expected to vote for OPPD’s higher rates on Thursday

Although voters sent incumbents N.P. “Sandy” Dodge and Lloyd Scheve packing there’s no indication (see video below) tomorrow’s vote will be delayed until November’s winners, Mick Mines and Tom Barrett, take office in January.

Mines easily defeated Scheve.

Dodge’s race against Barrett went all the way to a recount, which late last week found Barrett the winner by 112 votes.

Largely due to problems at the troubled nuclear power plant at Fort Calhoun, OPPD is looking to raise rates in 2013 by 7.7 percent on residential customers—an $88 a year increase.

Dodge tells Nebraska Watchdog’s Joe Jordan there’s no reason to delay the vote.


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  • ProgressiveOasis

    So what do you expect? MUD announced another rate hike which was approved with votes from “lameduck” Board members too. For all the supposed benefits of “public utilities”, OPPD shows what happens with an incompetent Board backing incompetent management knowing full well that they can pass their mistakes along to their captive ratepayers. How about some bright boy down in the Lameislature introducing a bill to force supplier choice for residential utility customers??? We have choice when it comes to telecommunication services, why not when it comes to our purchases of electricity and natural gas??? Other jurisdictions allow residential customer choice and where they do, people get excellent service and competitive rates without the “overhead” of paying for incompetent management mistakes.

  • Watching_From_Lincoln

    Why don’t you move down here to Lincoln and see how a Public Utility (LES) should be ran. Just because some Republican Good Ol’ boys ran OPPD into the ground with their mismanagement and passed the buck along to the rate payers is NOT a reason to bash publicly owned utilities – you want outrageous rates and poor service move to California or New York and see what you get with Con Ed et al. Public utilities ARE cheaper and have better service than privately owned, for profit utilities.

    What OPPD SHOULD do is rid themselves of the Ft. Calhoun albatross around their neck and decommission it and replace its production capacity with wind farms.

  • Jazzee

    how about stop raising rates for ‘personnel costs like wages, health care and pensions’ for the unions….might start there eh?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Harbert/100001406372795 David Harbert

    I thought nuclear electric production was supposed to save money?
    We do have some of the lowest rates in the country, we have to we are a right to work cheaply state!

  • ProgressiveOasis

    Blind_From_Lincoln,
    If you want to pay NY or CA electric rates, keep pushing OPPD to scrap Ft. Calhoun and replace that generation capacity with “wind farms”. OPPD has put an outside private sector business in charge of Ft. Calhoun. That entity has already completely replaced Ft. Calhoun management and will likely run the plant effectively. If Ft. Calhoun is to be replaced, let’s push OPPD to add natural gas fired generation as the replacement. Cheaper, more reliable and a eco-friendly as any actual massive generation capacity can be. Wind and solar may be just “awesome” but they cost hundreds of times what natural gas already does. BTW, LES isn’t any better than OPPD or NPPD. What they all need to spur maximum efficiency is competition that residential customer choice programs would provide.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Harbert/100001406372795 David Harbert

    Not for the unions, but for the people that work there. Could you be hired to work there? Would you?