We Power DC

Public Power for the Nation's Capital
IG: @wepowerdc Email: [email protected]
#DCStatehood

[We Power DC @WePowerDC]

Join our campaign for greener, cheaper public power!
Sign up for our mailing list and let us know if you'd like to chat with an organizer to get more involved:

👇
https://t.co/F1gn39DnQY

[Food & Water Watch @foodandwater]

Utility companies are SO mad that they might not be able to buy elections anymore ☹️

[Axios @axios]

Exclusive: Democrats' "Project 2029" targets utility monopolies https://t.co/CBDQmXBqW2

[Charles Allen @charlesallen]

Yesterday, the Council unanimously passed my GRID Act on its first vote, helping fight skyrocketing utility bills.

How?

It checks Pepco and Washington Gas on how much they can profit off infrastructure work and cuts the red tape to install solar faster and cheaper. 🧵

[We Power DC @WePowerDC]

Corporate utilities like DTE are antithetical to actual democracy. They actively seek to undermine voters to protect their inflated profits.

[molly taft @mollytaft]

NEW: voters in michigan last week overwhelmingly voted to ban utilities and government contractors from making political donations

now, the state's two powerful utilities are suing, alleging the new rules violate their 1st amendment rights
https://t.co/DXOG6WuJEy

[Martin Austermuhle @maustermuhle]

To try and lower D.C.'s high utility bills, city lawmakers want to limit how much guaranteed profit companies like Pepco and Washington Gas can make. My story in @washingtonsun on the debate over what's called the return on equity: https://t.co/LPhoVNDuCQ

[David Pomerantz @DavidPomerantz]

“Michigan really is ground zero right now for a utility accountability wave that is quite national.”

[We Power DC @WePowerDC]

@AlexKomaDC Wasting time with a study of ROE changes is incredibly silly. It’s well-known investments in utilities are incredibly low-risk & the returns should reflect that.

9-10% ROE is inflated and saddles customers with unneeded cost.

[Alex Koma @AlexKomaDC]

A bill full of utility reforms aimed at curbing costs/strengthening oversight is set for a first Council vote today.

Expect healthy debate over a provision to limit profits regulated utilities can earn. I hear Wendell Felder wants a study of the issue...a common delay tactic

[Elissa Silverman @tweetelissa]

Another bill before @councilofdc deals w utility costs called the GRID Act (I am rare gov person who is anti-acronym). Looks like my pal @Zeke_Cohen & Balto City Council are also examining Return on Equity of @Exelon subsidiary @MyBGE. ROE, as it is known, is sticky point of GRID

[Utility Dive @UtilityDive]

Inside the ‘pressure cooker’: Electric utility regulators gather in wake of electoral earthquake

Newly elected leaders and customers are “questioning our foundational regulatory approaches,” said Ann Rendahl, president of NARUC.

https://t.co/TsFfSFb47q

[Martin Austermuhle @maustermuhle]

It’s official: @JamalHoltz is now the interim At-Large member of the D.C. Council. He’s the council’s youngest member, and “first Gen Z member.”

“I do not take lightly the responsibility that comes,” he says.

The special election is April 6.

[We Power DC @WePowerDC]

SEND A LETTER: https://t.co/PyCgeFpCuw

[We Power DC @WePowerDC]

Pepco and WGL are freaking out about the GRID Act, which would allow us to audit their assets, speed up solar, and take away tricks they use to hike our bills.

Tell the DC Council to pass the GRID Act this session!

[We Power DC @WePowerDC]

TOMORROW!

[We Power DC @WePowerDC]

From scorching job sites to flooded factories to overcrowded hospitals, workers are some of the first to face the repercussions of climate change.

Join WPDC and Metro DC DSA for a conversation with local union reps & climate experts about what's at stake for local workers.

[Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler @RepFiedler]

But infrastructure changes don’t account for the broken utility system. We must ensure that utility companies are held accountable. Pennsylvanians deserve safe and reliable service at a fair price. That means examining utility rate structures and preventing predatory practices.

[We Power DC @WePowerDC]

Greedy corporate utilities like Duke will always screw over their customers for shareholders. This is why we need public power in DC - and everywhere.

[Ben Inskeep @Ben_Inskeep]

📈Duke Energy is hiking residential utility bills to cover SOARING grid upgrades for a Meta data center and other big companies, per a new filing.💰

Duke is making all customers pay for the $687 million in Targeted Economic Development projects, plus profit, under its TDSIC Plan

[John Farrell ☀️🌬🔋 @johnffarrell]

We have seen the villain. Now is the opportunity to break its monopoly grip on power

[Lina Khan @linamkhan]

Why should Congressional Democrats investigate corporate America if their mandate is to deliver real economic change? Because investigations are a key catalyst for securing reform and legislation. For much of the last century, Congress used to be the main institutional player working to secure an economy that serves working people. A key tool was oversight. Lawmakers routinely investigated complex markets and major corporations, identifying problems and exposing wrongdoing. A major goal of these investigations was to learn what was driving certain problems and figure out how to fix them.

After Democrats took back the House during the first Trump administration in 2019, I joined the House Judiciary Committee as a staffer on the Antitrust Subcommittee. Under the terrific leadership of @RepJerryNadler and then-Rep @davidcicilline, we pursued an 18-month investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, securing key evidence of how their business practices were undermining competition and harming people, setting the basis for both lawsuits and proposed legislation.

A few lessons from that experience:

1. The quality of legislative oversight depends on the staff and the support of top members to confront power. Committee and Subcommittee Chairs that are focused on getting answers and unafraid to take on powerful corporate interests will make the difference between oversight that doesn’t surrender to their evasion tactics and oversight that aims low or flames out.

Even a relatively small number of dogged, talented lawyers ready to dive in can make a big impact. In the 1930s a single congressional lawyer, Ferdinand Pecora, helped reshape our entire banking system by subpoenaing records and interrogating top financiers, including J.P Morgan. The investigation exposed self-dealing, market manipulation, and tax avoidance, and laid the groundwork for foundational New Deal legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities Exchange Act.

2. Eliminating bottlenecks to moving investigations forward is key. For example, the House should make sure that Subcommittee Chairs can issue subpoenas rather than needing the sign-off of the full Committee or its Chair. A credible threat of sending subpoenas is critical for credible oversight.

3. Ensuring that members can develop the muscle to effectively interrogate CEOs requires investing in real preparation. In the lead up to the hearing with Bezos, Pichai, Cook, and Zuckerberg, the Antitrust Subcommittee spent months reviewing millions of documents collected from the firms, interviewing affected parties, briefing members on key evidence, and conducting practice hearings. Members came into the hearing deeply informed and able to rebut and call out CEO dissembling. The result was some of the most effective member questioning of executives we’ve seen in decades. @TheProspect wrote up a great overview: https://t.co/7BYC3UHFbW

4. For decades, institutional capacity in Congress has been extremely weak. Much of this traces back to the Gingrich Revolution, which was effectively the 1995 DOGE-ing of Congress. Republican leadership fired over 600 professional staffers, eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment, and gutted research capacity. None of that capacity was ever meaningfully restored.

As a result, members have way fewer resources to develop serious expertise or go deep on a new topic. Members should start rebuilding that capacity so the institution can fully play its Article I role, where Congress can again do serious policy development and legislating and serve as a real check on the executive and judicial branches.

5. AI markets should be high on the list of investigations. The business decisions of the major AI firms have huge public ramifications, yet the public is at a severe informational disadvantage when it comes to how these markets work and the choices these firms are making. A congressional investigation will help ensure future legislative action is based on a more complete view of what is going on rather than selective and partial corporate disclosures.

[David Pomerantz @DavidPomerantz]

New post: I think folks are failing to grasp what a watershed election this was for the politics of monopoly utility companies.

Governors are the most important people to utility regulation in most states. The new ones ran on aggressive utility accountability platforms. 1/9

[More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS]

HUGE: Michigan officially banned companies with more than $250,000 in state government contracts, and the state's utility monopolies, from contributing to campaigns last night.