Friday Homestead Dispatch

Worrisome Wandering Wankers

“An intellectual is usually someone who isn’t exactly distinguished by his intellect,” Corelli asserted. “He claims that label to compensate for his inadequacies. It’s as old as that saying: Tell me what you boast of and I’ll tell you what you lack. Our daily bread. The incompetent always presents themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant, and the feeble-minded as intellectual. Once again, it’s all the work of nature. Far from being the sylph to whom poets sing, nature is a cruel, voracious mother who needs to feed on the creatures she gives birth to in order to stay alive.” —The Angel’s Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

1.
Alright, I PROMISE this will be the last post on the dang prop 412 coming right up. I’ve been weirdly obsessed with digging down regarding the whole issue that I wrote about both here and here. I still have concerns about this being a rushed election. Judith Anderson of Tucson Climate Coalition says running the lines underground benefits UA, Banner Hospital and the neighborhoods nearby, so they should pay the extra cost, not every Tucsonan who pays a bill to TEP. “There's an Arizona state law that says anyone who wants an underground line will pay for it. But that's not being applied in this case. Instead, all of us rate payers are being asked to pay for it.” Anderson says the existing franchise agreement has three years left, so why not take time to write a new proposal that she says will be better for ratepayers and the environment.

On the other hand I had a text conversation with a friend of mine who is a Manager of Business Development for Tucson Electric Power. Regarding the opinion piece I posted from Councilman Steve Kozachik he says Steve gets it wrong. The Franchise Agreement is not the vehicle to compel investment in renewables; TEP is investing billions in the energy transition and has one of the more ambitious plans in the country. The franchise agreement helps keep O&M costs down, which are a direct pass through to customers. The agreement is not a vehicle to get leverage over TEP investors; it is a vehicle for the City to generate revenue in exchange for TEP infrastructure in city right of way. But it’s not required; we don’t have one with Oro Valley, for example. Most cities want reliable service, so they allow for that to happen.

He also said that, in TEP’s favor, the CAAP (Climate Action and Adaptation Plan), the City & TEP are working on an energy supply agreement to off-set 100% of scope 2 emissions for City Operation. TEP is also a major funder of the shade tree program, has given millions to support the electrification of the Sabino Canyon Team (https://www.tep.com/news/tep-powers-electric-shuttles-in-sabino-canyon/) AND the electrification of Sun Tran, which pulled in $12M in FTA grant funding.

We live in Ward 3 and our Council Member is Kevin Dahl. He and three other Council Members are on board with this proposition, along with Nikki Lee (Ward 4), Paul Cunningham (Ward 2), and Lane Santa Cruz (Ward 1), as well as the Mayor, former Congressman Ron Barber, former Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, former Tucson Council Member Molly McKasson, and former State Senator Kirsten Engel.

One thing to keep in mind is that the new agreement, if passed, would include a new 0.75% fee to fund certain electric infrastructure and climate resiliency projects. What’s NOT tied into this proposition is TEP’s request to the Arizona Corporation Commission to approve a 12% rate increase before the end of the year.

I also reached out to Blake Morlock, journalist for the Tucson Sentinel, for a bit more clarity. He graciously wrote back yesterday and said I think Koz's (Steve Kozachik) argument is interesting. I'm not sure how you do make sure that he doesn't pass the franchise fee along. An audit maybe. But money is so moveable that it would probably be next to impossible in any practical sense. The courts would probably knock down a city requirement that TEP change how it does its accounting. The law basically says "franchise agreements are merely for the purpose of regulating how utilities get to their equipment and allowing a small fee for the right to access." I would love to be able to demand the utility get off fossils, but the law doesn't allow that. My argument for it goes like this: Change the Legislature and we can change the nature of the agreements. We don't want to screw up the system's reliability and a no vote just takes us closer to more and longer blackouts and a lot of legal uncertainty for the want of 2 percent. I don't have a better argument than more downside than upside other than feeling good about sticking it to the man, which is always fun, but not always advisable.

Still confused? Me, too. Leaning toward a YES vote but my head hurts. Carry on…

2.
For a long term plan it appears that Arizona is at least investigating community choice aggregation (CCA)—also known as municipal aggregation—that would allow local governments to procure power on behalf of their residents, businesses, and municipal accounts from an alternative supplier while still receiving transmission and distribution service from their existing utility provider.

More information about community-owned public utilities are popping up right now and are worth taking a look. A friend of mine posted an article from the Guardian that New York state has passed legislation that will scale up the state’s renewable energy production and signals a major step toward moving utilities out of private hands to become publicly owned. The bill, included in the state’s new budget, will require the state’s public power provider to generate all of its electricity from clean energy by 2030. It also allows the public utility to build and own renewables while phasing out fossil fuels. “It’s a historic win for the climate and for clean jobs,” said Lee Ziesche, organizer with Public Power New York, a coalition that has been fighting to pass the legislation for the past four years. “It’ll create a model of public power for the whole country, and it’s really showing that our energy should be a public good.” The author goes on to say that historically, when utilities are owned by investors, profits go to shareholders. But in publicly owned models, profits are reinvested in the utility’s operations. Rates on energy bills are also generally lower.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said on September 21, 1932, “I therefore lay down the following principle: That where a community–a city or county or district–is not satisfied with the service rendered or the rates charged by the private utility, it has the undeniable basic right, as one of its functions of government, one of its functions of home rule, to set up, after a fair referendum to its voters has been had, its own governmentally owned and operated service.”

The American Public Power Association has published a comprehensive checklist/plan on forming a public utility. Forming a new public power utility is not a quick and easy process. It takes time and money, and requires the commitment of the community and its elected officials. It requires a long-term view of solving problems, and a commitment to see it through. The process can take several years. But most communities that that have gone through the process and have taken control of their electric utility agree it is worth it: they are reaping the benefits of public power every day.

Here you will find information that addresses common questions and the myths associated with forming a public utility: Since 1973, 88 electric utilities have been municipalized – 20 of those since 2000. Communities that have won the fight to gain local choice and ownership of their utility have demonstrated the payoff for customers. The city of Massena, New York, municipalized after taking about seven years to overcome legal hurdles erected by the incumbent private utility. Massena saved its customers $25 million in the first 10 years of operation and millions more since.

Paul Jay, co-creator and co-executive producer of Face Off and counterSpin and the founder of The Real News Network based in Baltimore, interviews Thomas Hannah, research director of the Democracy Collaborative and co-director of the organization’s Theory, Policy and Research Division, on the idea of moving toward a democratic ownership of public services. Jay asks the question In what way does a public utility act differently than a privately funded, privately owned one? Hannah answers the benefits of public ownership, in general, is that it’s a flexible ownership form. It’s not inherently better or worse than any other ownership form. But it allows you, or it allows the city or community, to determine what the priorities are, or their enterprise, or for their service. So, for instance, of the energy utilities, a lot of the drive to municipalize electric utilities is around renewable energy and around climate hurdles. Large, for profit companies, are very much constrained by their quarterly returns, by endless growth, having to deliver profit to their shareholders. And they are very reluctant to do anything that interrupts that. Especially things that are more long term, in the long term interests of people and planet. Municipal utilities, on the other hand, belong to the people. So a useful utility, or a public enterprise of any form, can be tasked to whatever the people decide they want and want to be tasked to do. So, for instance, one of the first utilities in the United States to get to 100 percent renewable was in Burlington, Vermont.  Was there publicly owned utility there? That’s because the people of Burlington, Vermont, the city leaders, wanted to get 100% renewable energy. So they have control. So it’s very much about control and who has control. Publicly owned enterprise gives the community control over a very important asset or service or enterprise.

All of this may play out in our community long after I’m gone but the time is now to seriously consider moving away from fossil fuels, the broken record of the 21st century.

3.
And, of course, Democrat’s two worst nightmares, Sinema and Manchin, are aligning with Republicans in the current debt negotiations. Manchin said he’s told McCarthy “there’s things I don’t like in there, but there’s a lot of things we can agree on.” In particular, he touted the idea of approving a bipartisan, bicameral fiscal commission that would be required to bring deficit reduction legislation to the Senate floor. Yes, let’s get Greene and Boebert together and have a cozy meeting where like minds will prevail. Jeebuz… If you’re too bored to death reading up on this issue, Heather Cox Richardson lays it out in a not-overly-long post from May 1. Biden still insists that he will not negotiate over paying the nation’s bills, although he is happy to negotiate over the national budget as part of the normal process. 

4.
Our Attorney General Kris Mayes is a force to reckon with. On Tuesday, she joined 22 other states and the District of Columbia in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is currently weighing an appeal of a ruling issued by a Texas judge last month. She said “We cannot allow anti-abortion activists and an extremist judge to undo over two decades of medical consensus. Mifepristone is safe and effective and has been used by millions of Americans over the past two decades. I will never stop fighting for the rights of Arizonans to make their own personal medical decisions.” 

To make sure we all head two centuries back, A Scottsdale-based law firm is hoping to reinstate a near-total abortion ban from 1864, filing an appeal on Wednesday to overturn a court ruling that allowed limited access to the procedure. Alliance Defending Freedom wants the Arizona Supreme Court to void the decision of the state appeals court that determined a 2022 law outlawing elective abortions after the 15-week mark supersedes the near-total ban originally written in 1864. The attorneys wrote that “Arizonans deserve to have their laws fully enforced. They made their voice heard at the ballot box — electing Legislature after Legislature to protect life as much as possible. And lawmakers delivered.” Yes, we want laws from the time period when germ theory was just a theory totally enforced and coerced.

5.
I have used quotes by Iris Murdoch (1919-1979) in a few of the cartoons I include in my posts. Here’s one from 2022:

…so I thought I’d check out her novel “The Sea, The Sea” from the library. It was her final work, published in 1978, and won the 1978 Booker Prize. The narrator, Charles Arrowby, is a self-deluded theater director who has retired and moved to an isolated coastal town on the North Sea. It’s close enough to London however as his old ‘friends’ and lovers keep showing up. There’s comedy and tragedy as, in Arrowby’s own mind, nothing or nobody seems to exist outside of his own impressions, leaving the read somewhat exhausting but worth trudging on through.

Here are a couple of passages that stuck with me:

‘I thought religious people felt weak and worshipped something strong.’
‘That’s what they think. The worshipper endows the worshipped object with power, real power not imaginary power, that is the sense of the ontological proof, one of the most ambitious ideas clever men ever thought of. But this power is dreadful stuff. Our lusts and attachments compose our god. And when one attachment is cast off another arrives by way of consolation. We never give up a pleasure absolutely, we only barter it for another. All spirituality tends to degenerate into magic, and the use of magic has an automatic nemesis even when the mind has been purified of grosser habits. White magic is black magic. And a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people. Demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards. The last achievement is the absolute surrender of magic itself, the end of what you call superstition. Yet how does it happen? Goodness is giving up power and acting upon the world negatively. The good are unimaginable.’

That no doubt is how the story ought to end, with the seals and the stars, explanation, resignation, reconciliation, everything picked up into some radiant bland ambiguous higher significance, in calm of mind, all passion spent. However life, unlike art, has an irritating way of bumping and limping on, undoing conversions, casting doubt on solutions, and generally illustrating the impossibility of living happily or virtuously ever after; so I thought I might continue the tale a little longer in the form once again of a diary, though I suppose that, if this is a book, it will have to end, arbitrarily enough no doubt, in quite a short while. In particular I felt I ought to go on so as to describe James’s funeral, although really James’s funeral was such a non-event that there is practically nothing to describe. Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.

And now…