CLEVELAND'S QUIET ELECTRIC RATE CRISIS: Our Cleveland Public Power bill showed up late last week. August consumption: 478 kilowatt-hours. Price: $60.91.

That's 12.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. Some CEI customers -- those not getting a discount from NOPEC, or from WPS in Cleveland -- are paying the same rate. Otherwise, there's not another electric utility, public or private, in the state of Ohio now charging home consumers as much as Cleveland's municipal electric system.

The political silence about this fact is astounding. And here's another astounding fact: according to CPP's last few financial statements, the system has been accumulating extra cash at a rate of $5 million a year or more, and had over $90 million in its pocket -- in "unrestricted net assets" -- at the end of 2003. (Here's CPP's 2003 audited financial report; see page 3.)

This is a bomb waiting to blow up in some City Hall faces. Eventually, some wannabe Council candidates are going to figure out how easy it is to cross-reference a likely voter list with the houses connected to Public Power poles, and how vulnerable an incumbent Councilman could be if the voters in those houses realize that they're getting royally hosed, with the incumbent Councilman's silent complicity.

Will "eventually" come in 2005? Or will the Mayor and Council, who are literally CPP's CEO and board of directors, decide to get on top of the issue now? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile... if the City is really concerned about so many of its residents living in poverty, overcharging all those poor residents for City electric service is a strange, strange way to show it.