Oh, the irony!

For decades, we've listened to politicians in the Toledo area tell us how terrible our electric and gas suppliers are. They're overcharging, we're told. We have the highest utility rates in the entire state, they say. These are evil companies who are too greedy to give us lower rates, they bemoan.

But when one of those 'terrible, evil, greedy' companies comes through with some grant money - $3.2 million - that can help save the city and erase almost half of the 2009 deficit?

What then? Will those same politicians refuse to take the money that was obtained by 'overcharging' the residents? I doubt it!

They'll probably justify it by saying 'some good' is coming from the high rates. Of course, that overlooks the point that the 'good' came from the rate payers, but is going to the government. But that's how most liberals think it should be, so that wouldn't be much of surprise.

There's actually more to this story than meets the eye, though. The 'grant' is in exchange for a six-year extension of the contract nine jurisdictions have with FirstEnergy Solutions to provide service within those municipalities. Following deregulation, several communities - including Lucas County - joined together to aggregate their buying power in order to obtain lower rates for customers. The Northwest Ohio Aggregation Coalition has been successful in negotiating lower rates over the years, and this contract is no different.

But it's still extremely ironic that the recipient of the ire of politicians, especially in election years, is now somewhat of a savior when it comes to Toledo's budget deficit.

And talk about timing! Toledoans on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would raid the Capital Improvements Fund in order to balance the general fund deficit. If that measure had been approved and the city got this grant money, their budget problems would pretty much have been over. Now, though, council and the mayor will have to continue to reduce spending - which is what they should have been doing in the first place - unless they take the easy way out and decide to raise taxes through various 'revenue enhancements.'

But even if the tax switch had been approved and the grant money received, it would only address this year's problem. Many of the concessions agreed to in the union contracts are for 2009 only. The reduction in the amount the city 'picks up' for PERS will end beginning in January - putting the city back into the position of paying for the employer and the employee contributions to that retirement program. Those PERS pickups are a large part of what makes the union contracts unsustainable over time - as we've all seen over the last several years.

But instead of addressing the long-term issues of the city's financial situation - the spending that just doesn't end - council and the mayor look to short-term solutions and one-time payments to save them.

Oh, the irony of having to depend upon your 'enemy' for your 'salvation.'

Everything you wanted to know about electric deregulation but were afraid to ask

Eye On Toledo Preview:

Electric deregulation...two words that make your eyes want to glaze over. It's a complicated subject that few understand fully. But with the Ohio Senate passing SB 221 and discussion starting in the Ohio House, the issue is once again front and center.

In 1999, SB 3 was passed and signed into law. It was supposed to gradually turn Ohio from a regulated energy state into one in which competition flourished. Since that time, legislators 'fiddled' with the plan and are again doing so.

My guest on Eye On Toledo Monday night is Lynn Olman, representing the Alliance for Real Energy Options. He was the chairman of the Ohio House Public Utilities Committee when he was a state rep. He'll help sort out what it all means, especially for those of us in northwest Ohio, where energy costs have traditionally been higher than most other areas of the state. For more information, please visit Eye On Toledo Blog.

Following his interview Monday, I'll do another blog post here to help make sense of this complicated subject. Hope you'll join us Monday night - and every night - at 6 p.m. on 1370 AM or online!

Two tidbits from Cato Institute

The first one is particularly interesting to me because a while back I got an email from the ORP about what the priorities for the upcoming state legislature should be and 'de-regulation' was one of the options.

Market Fix Rests on Bright Ideas

"Texas power rates have increased 56 percent since 2000, and the state's electricity is among the most expensive in the country despite promises prices would go down when the state opened electric power to competition," reports The Houston Chronicle. "Many in the industry say the market is working, particularly for customers willing to shop for the best rates. Two of the state's top three political leaders, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Gov. Rick Perry, share that view."

In "Short-Circuited," Jerry Taylor, Cato senior fellow, and Peter Van Doren, editor of Cato's regulation magazine, write:

"After a pretty good 30-year run, deregulation is on the political ropes. Although loosening the shackles on banking, trucking and airlines delivered lower prices, robust competition and political applause, it hasn't worked for electricity. ... So did free market reformers take deregulation too far? Yes and no. Yes, because they promised rate reductions they had no business promising. No, because deregulation of some parts of the system was offset by more ambitious regulations elsewhere. The end result is even more economically artificial than the one we started with. ... True deregulation involves allowing market actors to run their businesses in whatever manner they like, price what the market will bear, and discover for themselves how best to deliver goods and services without government influencing those decisions with carrots and sticks. The faux deregulation we have in the electricity market unfortunately falls short on most of those counts. And that -- rather than the rate increases -- is the real problem."

And then there was this one, particularly interesting considering the upcoming political discussion on SCHIP:

Democrats See Wedge Issue in Health Bill

"Representative John R. Kuhl Jr. of New York received just his second telephone call ever from his state's Democratic governor, Eliot Spitzer, last week and was not surprised at the topic: children's health insurance," reports The New York Times. "'He said, 'I am calling you to come over to the dark side,' 'said Mr. Kuhl, who was urged by the governor to drop his opposition to health care legislation and join the effort to override President Bush's veto of the bill. Mr. Kuhl, a Republican who narrowly survived the Democratic sweep of 2006, said he was unlikely to budge. As a result, voters in his district will also be getting calls -- from Democrats and advocacy groups who are planning a telephone, radio, television and even text-message barrage against Republicans over what is shaping up as a defining domestic policy issue of the 2008 campaign."

In "Sink this SCHIP," Michael F. Cannon, director of Cato's health-policy studies and co-author of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It, writes:

"SCHIP is senseless. Like its much larger sibling, Medicaid ... both programs force taxpayers to subsidize people who don't need help, discourage low-income families from climbing the economic ladder - and make private insurance more expensive for everyone else. ... All told, SCHIP is a very costly way of helping targeted families obtain health coverage...Some will complain that scrapping SCHIP would leave dependent families in the lurch. As a transitional step, Congress could convert federal Medicaid and SCHIP funding into a smaller, lump-sum payment to each state. That would serve as a halfway point toward eliminating these payments and simultaneously cutting taxes. States that want to maintain their current spending levels could raise the tax revenue themselves."

Whatever your position on the current legislation, I think the whole issue of the Federal government doing this - especially when it's called STATE Children's Health Insurance Plan - just adds more to the bureaucracy, and that's money which could be spent, instead, on direct services.