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I often slag my local paper (the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) as second rate. Growing up in a city with two first rate papers will do that to you. When they have real stories, the P-D does a great job with them and they have good reporters, but the cost cuts of the past several years have eliminated a lot of those top notch reporters and left the paper largely rerunning AP wire stories.

One of the stories that they have been following really well is that of our local electric utility, AmerenUE. Ameren is a conglomerate of all of the smaller electricity companies that were in the area and they have most of Eastern Missouri and Southern Illinois locked up.

They have had, let’s say, problems in the past 18 months. A storm in August 2005 left nearly half a million people without power for up to four days.

Last December, a reservoir at the top of a hill gave way unleashing a torrent of one billion gallons of water on a national forest and literally washing away the forest ranger’s house. Luckily, nobody in his family that was in the house at the time was seriously injured. Ameren is currently paying hundreds of millions of dollars to repair damage as the reservoir gave way because of human error and lax inspections.

Then, this summer two storms packing 75 mph winds hit the area two days apart. Another half a million people lost power as the temperatures soared to over 100 degrees. Some people lost power for almost two weeks. After the summer storm, the P-D began reporting that Ameren had been chastised by the Missouri Public Service Commission (it’s “regulator”) for cutting their tree trimming budget and falling several years behind on trimming trees away from power lines. Despite blaming trees toppled by the winds for the outages, Ameren claimed it was keeping up on tree trimming and had spent enough on upgrades to keep the system going.

Just before the summer storm, Ameren filed for a rate increase. In the filing, Ameren claimed that they were falling behind on system upgrades and that a rate increase was needed to fund further improvements. Yup, exactly the opposite logic that had so publicly trumpeted after the storms.

Last month, a major ice storm hit the state of Missouri. One of the worst in recent history according to most people. Again, half a million people lost power, some for two or more weeks as crews could not reach the downed lines in wooded areas. Though once again defending their spending on the electrical system, Ameren changed course and said these outages proved that they needed increased rates for upgrades and everybody should just shut up and pay, even if they have lost power for weeks at a time several times over the past couple of years.

Another P-D article that appeared two or three Sundays ago (but is not online) showed what a lackadaisical job Ameren did with line inspections. Most of the inspections that are done are done by the tree trimmers themselves, who have no electrical training other than “cut tree away from line”. Even the tree trimmers union has filed complaints against Ameren for this practice. But Ameren continues to say that lines are routinely inspected (though it fails to say by whom) and that the system is doing just fine.

Everyone expected the PSC to turn over and let Ameren rub it’s fuzzy belly like it has time and time again. However, PSC staffers shocked everybody but saying Ameren should not only be denied their rate increase, but actually have their rates cut. Apparently having three major outages and a hilltop reservoir give way in 18 months was enough for the PSC to notice that Ameren is doing a crappy job.

It probably helps that the political appointees of the PSC (and their bosses) are a little nervous now that Ameren’s approval rating rivals that of President Bush and that not doing something will make them look like the powerless bureaucrats who are sleeping with the utilities they regulate that they are.

The decision is not final and has to go to the PSC board, which is all politically appointed unlike the staff positions that are civil service jobs. It will be interesting to see if the PSC makes a big public display and then quietly approves the rate increases.