POWER COSTS IN OHIO: THE VIEW FROM NORTH OF THE LINE

I want to explain why I'm not so impressed with either the Strickland or Fingerhut answer to my questions about energy prices, but to do that I have to lay out some background. Bear with me, this is going to get wonky.

Let's start with last month's PUCO Ohio Utility Rate Survey:

As you can see, an Ohio Edison customer in Akron or Youngstown was charged almost $30 more than a customer of Ohio Power in Canton for exactly the same product -- 750 kilowatt-hours of residential electric service. The median price charged for this service by the three northern Ohio IOUs ("investor owned utilities") -- all subsidiaries of First Energy -- was 34% higher than the median of the four big southern IOUs.

To make this a little less abstract, here's a Google Map of one small area at the north end of North Canton, in Stark County. The blue line (not visible locally) is the boundary between the service territories of Ohio Edison and Ohio Power.


The homes above the blue line are in Ohio Edison territory, while those below the line are in Ohio Power's turf. So people living on Bretton, Amberley, Norriton, most of Chatham, Limington and points north are paying 11.4 cents per kilowatt-hour -- while their neighbors down the street and across the back yard on Brittany, Bridlewood and points south are paying only 7.5 cents. For a typical suburban household, the annual cost of being on the wrong side of the line is $350 to $400.

It's illegal for Ohio Power -- or any electric utility other than Ohio Edison -- to offer cheaper service to the neighbors north of the blue line. It's illegal for neighbors on Brittany to share their access to cheaper power with their backyard neighbors on Chatham. If a business on Cleveland Avenue installed a cogeneration system and had excess power, it would be illegal for that business to share it -- even for free -- with nearby residents or businesses; it could only be sold (at a lousy price) to Ohio Edison.

Under Ohio law (the "Certified Territories Act" of 1978), Ohio Edison owns those neighbors north of the blue line. Their only avenues of escape from the OE system are a) to move; b) to stop using electricity; c) to figure out how to make their own power, on their own individual premises; or d) to somehow convince North Canton to create a municipal electric system and then extend its lines to serve them (which would only be legal if their total consumption was less than 50% of the city's electricity sales inside its boundaries).

They don't call your electric company a "monopoly" for nothing.

This extraordinary legal status for electric and natural gas utility corporations is based on a theory of "natural monopoly" which this Wikipedia article explains at length, if you're interested. As Milton Friedman is quoted saying in the article, a natural monopoly in an essential industry can take three forms: a private unregulated monopoly, a private monopoly regulated by the state, or a government operation. Like most states, Ohio law allows only the second and third of these possibilities: Cities and villages can run their own electric or gas utilities within their borders if they want to, but otherwise we have to buy our electric or natural gas service from only one provider, in a fixed service territory, operating under the regulatory eye of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

For the captive customers of the corporations that dominate this market, PUCO regulation is supposed to ensure two things: reliable service and "fair and reasonable rates". For the regulated monopolies, the system is supposed to allow recovery of the costs, plus a reasonable return on the investment, that are required to provide that service.

The struggle to define "fair and reasonable rates" and "reasonable return" has been the Great Game of Ohio politics for many decades, consuming the careers (and making the fortunes) of tens of thousands of lawyers and lobbyists. As you would expect, the struggle has created an alternative universe of laws, regulations, precedents and deals which no ordinary citizen can hope to fathom.

But citizens can certainly ask how it can be "fair and reasonable" to compel Chatham Avenue residents to pay more than eleven cents for the same kilowatt-hour of electric service that costs less than eight cents on Brittany Drive, a couple of hundred feet away. Or, for that matter, to compel people and businesses in Akron and Cleveland to pay 40% to 50% more for the same service than they would down the road in Canton.

Why are the First Energy companies so much more expensive than other Ohio IOUs -- more expensive, in fact, than 80% of all electric utilities across the U.S.? The short answer is "their nuclear plants". The slightly longer answer is "their nuclear plants combined with lots of enablers in the General Assembly and the PUCO".

In the last five years these enablers, with great fanfare, have "deregulated" the portion of consumer rates that's supposed to pay for power generation, theoretically opening the door for other power generators to compete with the utilities' own high-cost plants for sales to the IOUs' captive customers. But the scheme also allows First Energy to charge its customers an extra 30% in "transition charges" (now renamed "rate stabilization charges") to keep us paying for those nuclear plants, no matter where our power comes from. So the actual impact of this "competition plan" on First Energy bills has been negligible, to put it mildly. (A good short history of the whole charade can be found here.)

The Ohio Republican Party owns this mess, having been in control of the PUCO and General Assembly for a decade and a half. A Democratic governor would have significant power, through his PUCO appointments and the bully pulpit, to push for remedies. Republican legislators from northern Ohio would have a very hard time resisting such a push if it actually promised lower electric bills for their districts. So northern Ohio voters have every reason to want to hear serious proposals from Ted Strickland and his rivals on this pocketbook issue.

What would my proposals be, if I were in Strickland or Fingerhut's shoes? Sure, I'd be talking about investments in fuel cells, clean coal and solar/wind generation -- for development and jobs, for the long haul. But millions of people and businesses on the wrong side of that blue line are being fleeced for hundreds of millions of dollars annually, right now. So I'd be talking about serious, immediate consumer relief measures, too. For example:

1) Appointing PUCO members who are committed to get rid of the extra "rate stabilization charges" on First Energy customers, as quickly as possible. And...

2) Creating real competitive pressure on the First Energy companies by opening some escape routes for their unhappy captive customers. Loosen the restrictions on municipal utility sales to customers outside their city lines. Let businesses and residents create local "mini-utility" coops to share locally generated power. Maybe even reform the Certified Territories Act to make it easier for communities to move their franchises from high-cost to lower-cost utilities.

Much has been said about Ted Strickland's electability advantage as a candidate from southern Ohio. I share that view, I admit. But every perspective has its blind spots. Maybe Rep. Strickland, coming from the land of coal-fired power plants, coal mining and modest electric bills, is a little slow to see why northern Ohio voters might still care about the PUCO and utility consumer issues. After all, politicians and voters in Cleveland aren't all that passionate about clean coal and biofuels, which are serious political business downstate. To some degree, the two regions are at opposite ends of the energy economy -- the employment end vs. the consumption end -- and can't help seeing it differently.

But that's why a candidate for governor has to make sure he's seeing it from both ends. It's why Strickland needs to make sure his energy platform is talking to people both north and south of that blue line.

Not long ago, telephone service was a "natural monopoly", too. Cellphones helped to destroy that assumption, but so did public officials and regulators who were determined -- in the holy names of competition, innovation and lower prices -- to make entrenched, expensive, technically mediocre telecom monopolies a thing of the past.

Is it the electric industry's turn? If so, the next governor of Ohio will have a lot to say about it. A good place to start that discussion would be some neighborhood like the one in our Google map, where Ohio's northern and southern energy economies divide at a backyard fence line.

A good time would be right now.

I LOVE UBUNTU!

When I teach beginner computer classes, I always try to work Moore's Law into the curriculum. Moore's Law, I like to explain, is a poor geek's best friend.

For you non-geeks, Moore's Law is the prediction, first made by Intel founder Gordon Moore in 1965 and confirmed by experience, that the number of transistors in the cheapest CPU will double every 12-18 months -- which means that the speed of computers at any price point predictably doubles over the same period. Moore's Law is the reason your new computer gets old so fast.

The significance of Moore's Law to low income nouveau geeks lies in what I like to call Callahan's Corollary: If you can't afford the computer you want now, wait a few years and you can have it for free.

Well, that might be little exaggerated. By the time a stranger hands you an old PC for nothing, nothing is probably pretty much what it's worth (unless you're a nonprofit organization getting a donation, which I'll get to in a second). But with some effort, an individual now has an excellent chance of finding a 1999-vintage P2 system -- a machine that cost $800 to $1000 new -- for less than a hundred bucks. And that almost-free system will do just about anything an ordinary home computer user needs it to do...

Assuming it's got the right software.

A good used computer usually began its career on a business or institutional network. When it's replaced and sent out the loading dock door, either to a commercial recycler or as a gift to a nonprofit, its hard drive (if it still has one) is almost always bare. Whoever's going to use it needs to provide a new operating system and application programs. And that's where things get complicated.

Most users expect to use Windows. But that used P2 isn't going to run XP, even if you can afford to pay $200 for a retail copy. It wants Windows 98 -- which you can no longer acquire legally, off the shelf, at any price.

You can get get a copy non-legally, of course... from your brother's old box of software, or the used PC store where you don't ask for documentation, or even the library. And you'll probably end up loading Office or Works the same way, for the same reason. This gray-market approach is the only way most used PCs ever make it to their second lives. It works out okay for most individuals because, as much as Microsoft's lawyers hate it, there isn't much they can do to stop what they can't see.

But what if you're a nonprofit organization trying to get large numbers of donated computers into low-income households... enough households to make a real impact on the digital divide in your community? If you're in a city like Cleveland, you've got a pretty decent chance of getting lots of donated computers; corporations dispose of thousands every year. But to get their attention and get those machines, not to mention some funding, your efforts have to be as public as you can make them. If your donor base knows what you're doing, Microsoft will probably notice too... which means you don't want to be loading unlicensed MS software on those donated computers. Just ask your organization's lawyer.

Some nonprofit recyclers, like Cleveland's wonderful Computers Assisting People, have special arrangements with Microsoft that allow them to load Windows 98 (or XP) on recycled systems for $5 a license. But here's the hitch... those licenses can only be legally transferred to nonprofit organizations, not individuals.

So community technology organizers who want to make Moore's Law work for our low-income neighbors have a problem. The cheap, capable computers are out there. But without cheap, legal operating system licenses, what good are they?

In effect, the Windows license system suspends the benefits of Moore's Law for poor people.

For at least ten years the solution has been obvious in principle -- find an Open Source operating system that works well on older processors, has a graphic interface that won't freak Windows newbies out too badly, and comes with versions of all the applications that people commonly use (or has an easy way to download them). For the last couple of years we've been inching closer and closer to this Promised Land -- the land of Easy Free Software for Everyone.

Now I think we've finally crossed over.

Ubuntu Linux has been out for over a year, but the newest releases have been available only since mid-Fall. Go look at the web page for all the history (it's a version of Debian Linux being sponsored by a billionaire named Mark Shuttlesworth). I first heard about it from Phil Shapiro via a CTCNet email list, but it turns out the ECHO project in East Cleveland has been using it on recycled PCs since September.

Like almost all Linuxes, Ubuntu is a free download, or they'll send you a free CD if you prefer.

It loads, by default, with Open Office and Firefox as well as AbiWord and Gnumeric ready to run. (AbiWord and Gnumeric are operationally indistinguishable from Word and Excel, handle ".doc" and ".xls" files just fine, and run much better on a P2 machine than Open Office.)

It has a wonderful "package manager" that makes it easy to install lots of other free programs. No, I mean easy.

It's also easy to tweak the preferences so Ubuntu will look and act just like Windows, if that's what you want. And it finds and connects to Windows networks effortlessly.

But here's the part that's got me all atwitter: Ubuntu loaded without a hitch, and is running at very acceptable speed, on two donated Dell Pentium II computers, each with less than 200 mhz of RAM, that I got from a local business donor last Wednesday. The only special effort required was finding and installing a Linux driver for the Dells' integrated Crystal sound cards (I needed help from a Linux cognoscentus for that... but only the first time.) In the PC recycling world that's a walk in the park.

Friends, trust me, this is a big deal. A major barrier to digital inclusion for low-income people in Cleveland and elsewhere has just come down. Microsoft licenses just became a non-issue.

Moore's Law and Ubuntu -- the poor geek's best friends.

I think I'm in love.

P.S. Here's a screenshot of my Ubuntu desktop with a Gnumeric spreadsheet open. Look familiar? (Click for a closer look.)

MOVIN' ON UP: A little item in this morning's PD about Lorna Wisham's new job is another reminder of how fast your star can rise in the executive offices at City Hall, even if the voters decide they're not too happy with your boss's performance.

Wisham joined Mayor Campbell's staff in February 2002, fresh from three years as a marketing staff for the Downtown Cleveland Partnership. Four years later -- having served as interim Community Relations Director for ten months, then as the Mayor's Chief Public Affairs Officer for two years (during which Campbell's public approval collapsed) -- Wisham is leaving City Hall as the new "regional vice-president for external affairs" for CEI/First Energy.

Quite a career curve, eh?

I've been in a few meetings with Wisham. I liked her. She's smart, sensible, businesslike and friendly -- just the kind of new face that First Energy needs to put forward to public officials, media and "the community". I'm sure she'll be worth every penny of her considerable paycheck.

As will David Fitz, who came back to the area looking for work after a gig staffing a city councilman in Philadelphia, got a research job with our City Council, then became Campbell's press secretary a year and a half ago... and is now, mirabile dictu, the new Director of Public & Media Relations for the Cleveland Clinic.

As will Chris Ronayne, who attached himself to Campbell as a young planner, staffed her at the County Commission, managed her first campaign for Mayor, became her City Planning Director and chief of staff... and has now leapt gracefully to the top job at University Circle, Inc. (The last two people who held that job are now, respectively, the executive director of the Gund Foundation and the "senior vice president for corporate diversity" at National City.)

See how it works? For an ambitious staffer, the Mayor's Office is a career elevator that only goes up. If your boss does well, you have a shot at getting to the Big Show in Columbus... the inside circle of a governor, or maybe, some day, a cabinet job of your own. But even if your Mayor crashes and burns, the elevator doesn't take you back down to where you started -- it leaves you off on an upper floor anyway. Assuming, of course, that you've been careful to make the right friends.

It's a compelling reason for young public servants at City Hall to be very, very nice to the Important People -- like utility and hospital executives -- that they meet on City business.

BACK AT YA, HENRY: PD business writer Henry Gomez declares Meet The Bloggers the "Blog of the Year" in yesterday's Tech Ink column.

In fairness, I have to point out that Henry's own Tech Link has also been one of Cleveland's most consistently interesting blogs since it appeared in August. It's hands down the "Best Use of a Blog by a PD Staff Writer" in 2005, or ever.

THE HOMELESS GRAPEVINE BLOG

Just got an email from Brian Davis of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, asking for a link to the Coalition's new blog. (Well, not so new... seems like it's been up since early November.) I can't think of a better thing to post on Christmas Eve.

Be sure to click through to NEOCH's main site -- there's a whole lot of mandatory reading, including this fact sheet on homelessness in Cuyahoga County. An excerpt:

Based on a “point in time” count of homeless persons in January, 2005, 2,198 homeless persons were identified. Of these, 1,208 were in emergency shelters, 738 were in transitional housing, and 252 were unsheltered and living on the street.

NEOCH also believes that there are another 2,000 people “uncounted” on the streets in abandoned buildings and in remote locations outside of the downtown area every night.

Of the 2,198 homeless persons identified in the January, 2005 count, 147 were families with children. We have no idea how many people sleep in an overcrowded apartment or are “doubled up.”

In a background study prepared for Housing First, the Levin College at Cleveland State University estimated that the homeless population of Cuyahoga County most likely ranged between 12,546 and 18,122 persons per year. This includes persons who were episodically homeless and those who are homeless but unknown to the system of care.

The Grapevine is, of course, the paper that homeless folks have been selling on Cleveland streets for the past dozen years. The archives are here.

LOOKING FOR WORK?

Geoff, who follows these things, points out that Frank Jackson's mayoral transition team is advertising on careerbuilder.com for a "Chief of Technology":

While working with the leaders of other departments, you will make City Hall departments more technologically capable of communicating with one another, and with citizens.

The City of Cleveland doesn't currently have such a title, but there's a Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, who's "responsible for developing, implementing and supporting Information Technology (IT) strategies to improve government services for the City of Cleveland." Sounds pretty similar.

Other openings listed (unambiguously) by the Jackson team: the Directors of Public Safety, Economic Development, Community Development, Community Relations, and Finance.

BUCKEYE POLITICS SCORES AT ODP: Tim Russo's writing on the Ohio Democratic Party leadership struggle has led the news cycle for the last couple of weeks, but yesterday's live-blogging of the vote (first via voicemail and now in print) was downright lethal. If there's a reason for newspapers to worry about competition, this is what it looks like. (And there wasn't even wi-fi in the room.)

Here's T.C. Brown's pretty good coverage in this morning's PD. A year ago, this would have been all we could get.

On the substance of the vote, I don't have a clue what all the jockeying about secret ballots, intimidation, people's jobs, etc. was about, but any process that includes walking over Stephanie Tubbs-Jones and Rhine McLin at the same time is a bad idea. John Ryan hopes Redfern will make peace. Lotsa luck.

Update: Tim wasn't the only blogger at the meeting. Live From Dayton and BuckeyeSenate also have first-hand accounts, and BuckeyeSenate promises audio soon. (Courtesy of neobabble.)

UTILITY BLOGGER: I just caught Henry Gomez's very nice post at Tech Link last Wednesday about my "utility blogging". Coincidentally, I've been struggling for the last couple of days with a complicated entry about the big disparity in electric rates between northern and southern Ohio, and what I think public leaders -- Democratic candidates for governor and attorney general, in particular -- should be doing about it. That should be posted soon, but maybe it's time for a few prior words about my obsession with energy and utility issues.

The main source of my interest in this stuff is that I've spent a large part my adult life learning about it. I came back to Ohio in August 1976 at the invitation of some folks who wanted to start a consumer organizing project in Akron (does anyone out there remember Bob Loitz?), and immediately found myself in the midst of a grassroots campaign to pass four state ballot proposals for PUCO and utility reform. The issues went down in flames, of course -- I believe the utilities outspent the "Yes" campaign forty to one, or something like that -- but I got a crash course in the theory and politics of electric and gas rates in Ohio.

That was the beginning of a fourteen-year stint of utility consumer organizing and advocacy -- first with People Power, a neighborhood-based organization in Akron that led coalitions against Ohio Edison and East Ohio Gas rate hikes; and then with the Ohio Public Interest Campaign (now Ohio Citizen Action) where I was Energy Program Director from 1980 through 1989. I helped research, strategize and organize campaigns to keep nuclear plant investments out of consumers' rates; to block Ronald Reagan's proposed deregulation of wellhead natural gas prices; to protect households from winter shutoffs; to preserve and expand municipal electric systems in Cleveland and elsewhere; and to get utilities to invest in conservation and "demand-side management". (One small point of pride -- getting Amory Lovins to come speak in Cleveland way back in 1984.) Without getting into twenty-year-old war stories (summary: we won some, we lost more), I got to be pretty knowledgeable, for a guy without a degree in law or engineering, about Ohio's utility industry, the PUCO, the many enduring ways they work together to screw the rest of us, and the politics of the whole sick process.

After 1989, I left consumer organizing behind to work in neighborhood development, and later in community technology. But I still try to pay attention, and I still pay gas and electric bills. And working on community strategies for IT literacy and access has brought me back around to the arena of utility regulation -- this time, the emerging public utility of fast Internet access.

To an old utility geek, the territory looks depressingly familiar.

No, TCP/IP networks aren't all that similar to power lines or pipelines, and the economics of information isn't very much like the economics of heat and light. What is familiar, though, is the PUCO's (and General Assembly's) routine devotion to the financial interests of the companies it regulates, rather than the public interest it exists to protect. Also familiar -- the way money flows around Ohio's political process to reinforce and protect this special relationship between the regulators and the regulated. Also familiar -- the way not just consumers, but upstart technologies and providers (renewable and distributed power generators, wireless network innovators), are kept on the margins of the regulatory process, outside looking in.

Like schools, roads and taxes, utility regulation is always there on the list of big-ticket state government functions. But unlike the other three, utility regulation isn't mostly about public budgets, and it doesn't divide the broad public into competing interests. Instead, it's about billions of private dollars flowing, in small increments, from all of us to a handful of legally privileged private corporations.

It's not surprising that these corporations work so hard to dominate the policy arena. Nor is it surprising that policy makers -- elected officials as well as professionals -- tend to gravitate to the industry side of the table, where the grants, fees, jobs and campaign contributions are to be found.

But I do find it surprising that utility consumer advocacy is so rare among politicians these days. After all, there aren't many issues that unite the material interests of so many diverse Ohioans -- poor and middle class, urban and rural, business and resident -- against such a small circle of privileged insiders. There aren't many issues that make themselves so obvious on a monthly basis. There aren't many issues in which the nexus of power -- PUCO, utility lobbyists and legislators -- is so clearly understood and distrusted by the public. There is no other area (can you think of one?) in which private monopolies are still enforced, protected against economic and technological competition, and guaranteed profitability by state law.

So I really don't understand why some opportunistic Democrats (and Republicans, too) aren't raising hell about utility issues, both old and new. But they're not. So I figure I should.

Plus, as a northern Ohioan, my electric and gas bills are big enough to piss me off on a regular basis. What's better for blogging than that?

BRYAN FLANNERY MET THE BLOGGERS this morning. The former Lakewood state representative, seeking the Democratic nomination for Governor, was quizzed in detail by George, Tim and me about his signature school funding plan and other issues.

MTB interviews already scheduled for January include Secretary of State candidate Jennifer Bruner on the 4th and Sherrod Brown on the 14th.

At Brewed Fresh Daily, George would like to have a talk with you about MTB.

CLEVELAND AFL-CIO DELEGATES ENDORSE BROWN FOR SENATE, STRICKLAND FOR GOVERNOR

Breaking news from John Ryan:

Congressmen Ted Strickland and Sherrod Brown got early Christmas presents from the Delegates at the Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor: Recommendations for the posts they seek in the 2006 elections. The Cleveland AFL-CIO Delegates unanimously decided to recommend Ted Strickland for Governor and Sherrod Brown for the U.S. Senate. The recommendation will be sent to the Ohio AFL-CIO for their consideration; the state body next meets in January 2006.

Not a surprise in any way, but another sign that lines will be drawn early and hard in the Brown/Hackett race.

PAUL HACKETT MEETS THE BLOGGERS

The audio of U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hackett's Meet the Bloggers interview is on line, in four parts. Interviewers include Tim, Gerardo, George, Adam, Brian, Jill, Pho and me.

Check out descriptions of the session at Pho's Akron Pages and Now That's Progress. Also, Tim excerpts an exchange on future Iraq funding.

Update 12/15: The transcript is available here.

STRICKLAND RESPONDS ON HIGH UTILITY COSTS... KIND OF

Last Friday I posted this comment on Rep. Ted Strickland's campaign blog about his energy and jobs program:

One of the things the governor does is appoint the Public Utilities Commission. Northern Ohio, for as long as anybody can remember, has had the highest total energy costs on both businesses and consumers outside of a couple of spots on the two coasts, particularly electricity costs. We’ve gone through now over a decade of so-called deregulation and that has not changed. That’s obviously a competitive issue for businesses.

What is your plan, if any, to deal with energy costs (as distinct from sources or jobs) particularly for this part of the state?

Today there's a response posted by Strickland campaign staffer Jesse Taylor (who also sent it to me by email):

You are absolutely right that electricity rates in Northeast Ohio are very high, and present a competitive challenge. The situation is bound to be uncertain as we approach the end of our deregulation transition period, in which energy prices are still somewhat controlled. At this point, any changes in the regulatory structure will require not only PUCO action, but also legislative changes. Ted believes that its important to monitor the current transition period closely. Ted will appoint people to PUCO that will look out for the best interests of Ohioans and our businesses.

In approaching this issue, there are two things Ted thinks we need to be concerned about (1) the ability of the deregulated enterprise to generate the capital needed to invest in new technologies that can generate Ohio jobs and clean up air emissions and (2) the system’s ability to keep energy prices at a low enough level to keep Ohio energy prices competitive.

Clearly, this is a complex issue that will require informed input from all the stakeholders. Ted really values input and ideas from everyone on this issue.

In the long term, Ted’s Friday announcement addresses part of the problem by laying out a specific plan to increase supply, and, hopefully positively affect prices.

As you know, Ted’s plan is to marshal at least $1 billion in public private partnership to develop new sources of energy production : ethanol, clean coal, solar and wind – all of which will not only create jobs but help reduce high energy prices.

Here's Eric Fingerhut's response to the same question.

It's striking that both candidates, when asked about energy prices (i.e. high utility bills), mostly want to talk about big investment in new energy sources, which they say will lead, in some unspecified way, to lower consumer costs. Speaking as an old utility consumer activist from back in the 70s and 80s, when we were hearing the same story about nuclear plants, I'm not at all sure I buy this. And I'm really not sure it's going to impress voters, whose outrage about this winter's utility bills will still be fresh when the primary rolls around in May.

"Ted really values input and ideas from everyone on this issue." Okay, I'll give it a try in my next post.

MTB NEWS FLASH: Tim reports that Democratic candidates for Governor Ted Strickland and Eric Fingerhut have agreed to their first debate -- on Meet The Bloggers! (Fingerhut hasn't formally declared yet, of course, but he sure sounds like he's running.)

What about Bryan Flannery, the other declared candidate? He's scheduled for an MTB interview Friday.

Also this week: U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hackett, Wednesday morning.

FEAGLER

Please, Mr. PD Editor, please find another actor to play the "ordinary old sort-of-liberal white-guy columnist who remembers how it used to be" role. This one's just not trying any more.

Somewhere in the ranks of your working reporters there must be someone who aspires to be the new Royko (or Breslin, or Hamill, or whoever). There must be someone in the newsroom who's got the experience, the address book and the long perspective the role requires -- but is still a real live journalist, committed to learning and sharing things we don't already know. There must be someone whose grasp of technology and media has moved beyond early Paddy Chayefsky.

It's time to open up the slot and give'em a chance.

I don't think Feagler is too old or out-of-touch to write a good column -- in his own way he's still a sharp, knowledgeable guy -- but he has obviously decided not to give a crap any more. Today's willfully ignorant, meretricious, mean, dumbass piece on blogs should settle any lingering doubt about that.

Mr. Editor, it's time. Give the space to someone who cares.

Others on this subject: George (with lots of comments), Tim, Bridget, JMZ, Cool Cleveland, John Ryan, Chas.

STRICKLAND POSTS ENERGY PLAN

Coincidentally, Ted Strickland's campaign just posted his new "Good Jobs through Clean Energy" program.

Shorter version: He'll use $250 million in tax-exempt state bonds plus Third Frontier money to "create new jobs and a cleaner environment by investing in new, cutting-edge sources of energy including biofuels, solar, wind, and clean coal technologies."

Looks like it's basically the Policy Matters/Apollo Alliance approach, with a heavy skew toward clean coal and biofuels. Strickland also wants to target investment to automotive technology, solar and and wind, but doesn't mention hydrogen or fuel cells.

Strickland's plan mentions consumer and business energy costs in passing, but doesn't really talk about reducing them.

So I guess I should send him an e-mail with the same question I asked Fingerhut. Stay tuned.

FINGERHUT ON NORTHERN OHIO ENERGY COSTS

An excerpt from the Meet The Bloggers transcript:

Bill Callahan: One of the things the governor does is elect the public utilities commission, or appoint the public utilities commission. Northern Ohio for as long as anybody can remember has had the highest total energy costs on both businesses and consumers outside of a couple of spots on the two coasts, and particularly electricity costs. We’ve gone through now over a decade of so-called deregulation and that has not changed. That’s obviously a competitive issue for businesses.

Eric Fingerhut: Absolutely.

Bill Callahan: What is your plan, if any, to deal with energy costs, particularly for this part of the state?

Eric Fingerhut: It’s a great question. It’s a classic and you focused properly on the PUCO as the location for creating positive change in this area. We need a new generation of electricity generating plants in Ohio for our competitiveness, for our environment, for our economy. It exists out there. The technology is being developed that would allow us to build much more efficient, clean, lower polluting, lower cost, energy generating plants.

So, the challenge for the next governor in working with his or her appointments to the PUCO, will be to work with – you’ve got to work with the incumbent utilities. I mean, they’re there. To work with them to develop a plan and an investment and a rate structure that says we are going to build these new plants. We’re going to build cutting edge, top of the line plants all over the state of Ohio. And what does it take for us to get there. By the way, there’s an irony in this which is if you actually were using the most modern technology, you could also burn Ohio coal. One of the things that’s happening is that these plants are all shipping coal in from the west and they’re not burning Ohio coal, and we’re getting the worst of both worlds. It’s still expensive and high polluting. But the technology exists to do it in the most modern and efficient plants.

The other thing that we’re going to do is we’re trying to build this fuel cell industry in Ohio. Obviously a lot of it’s based here in northeast Ohio. It’s another example of my argument about scale. We created the fuel cell institute at the Wright Center and all that. We put some money into it, but it’s a small amount ultimately. We’re going to have to significantly invest in that on an annual basis to get to the point where fuel cells could really be a source of energy. And Ohio can be the center of a new industry for it.

Bill Callahan: Quick follow-up question. The last time the state was told that we were going to lower electricity costs through a new generation of plant investment was in the 1970s. There were nuclear power plants and that’s the reason why we have the high rates we have today because northern Ohio is still paying for those investment costs. Could you speak to why what you just said is different and how it relates to the question of high electric rates now imposed on northern Ohio? I mean, do you think that you can lower electric rates by building new plants in the near term?

Eric Fingerhut: Yes, I do because it’s simply a fact that the new technologies that exist are lower cost because they’re more efficient. I mean, more efficient plants are lower cost. That’s one of the reasons why the cost of commodities comes down because the more you invest in the technology, the lower the price of producing each unit is. So, we need to move to the building of those. They tend to be smaller plants, but they’re more technologically advanced. Now, what we need to do to achieve that is to transfer the revenue stream that the PUCO has directed to those utilities to still pay off the old plants and transfer it into the investment in new plants. When you get those up and running – they don’t take decades to build, it’s a matter of a couple years — you can lower rates, absolutely. This isn’t going to happen overnight, but it can happen in the course of a gubernatorial term.

What do you think, folks? Lower electric bills through new coal plants and fuel cells?

MEET THE BLOGGERS: FINGERHUT AUDIO IS ON LINE

The audio of State Senator Eric Fingerhut meeting the bloggers is now posted (in four parts) at Meet The Bloggers. (It doesn't say anything about the transcript, but I bet it'll be up in a day or two.)

Jim Eastman and Jill Miller Zimon post about the MTB Experience.

Update: The Fingerhut transcript is now posted!

(If you appreciate the chance to read rather than listen, please note George's point about the cost. Thanks, Gerardo and BuckeyePolitics.net!)

ERIC FINGERHUT MEETS THE BLOGGERS; SHERROD BROWN WILL, TOO

An excellent MTB interview with State Senator Eric Fingerhut about his possible candidacy for Governor took place this morning at Talkie's, with live blogging by George Nemeth. The audio and transcript should be posted soon. (In the spirit of continuous improvement, our techmeister George recruited WRUW's Jim Eastman to help with the sound. Every day in every way...)

There's been much agitation on other blogs recently about whether Congressman Sherrod Brown will MTB. The answer, as of this morning, is yes... some time in January.

(Brown's rival for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, Paul Hackett, is semi-scheduled to MTB next Wednesday.)

Update 12/9: The MTB interview with Paul Hackett is definitely scheduled for next Wednesday morning. There's still time to contribute your questions for the interview here. Also, gubernatorial candidate Brian Flannery will Meet The Bloggers next Friday.

CLEVELAND-ONTARIO FERRY: HAS THIS SHIP SAILED?

Jerry at Red Wheebarrow is still skeptical about the prospects of the Cleveland-to-Ontario ferry project. George at BFD echoes his doubts.

I say my piece in a comment on the BFD post.

Anybody up for a Blogger Road Trip to London, Ontario to find out what people there are thinking?

DEMOCRACY REDUCTION PETITION UPDATE

The Plain Dealer asks some of the right questions in its editorial this morning about the Cleveland City Council reduction petition. But the editorial writer gets one important thing wrong: If the proposal appears on the May 2006 primary ballot and passes, the new smaller Council will have its first election in 2007, not 2009.

Here's the proposed language, with emphasis added:

The eleven (11) Councilmen to be elected under the terms herein shall be elected at the next regular Municipal Election in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 3 of the Charter of the City of Cleveland. The division of the City into wards existing at the time of the adoption of this amendment shall continue until changed as provided.

And here's Chapter 3 of the City Charter:

A general election for the choice of elective officers provided for in this Charter shall be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in odd numbered years. Elections so held shall be known as regular Municipal elections. Such other elections shall be held as may be required by law, or provided for in this Charter.

A "regular Municipal election" takes place every odd-numbered year. In November 2007, as in 2005, a handful of City voters will elect some Muny Court judges. But if the petitioners have their way, we'll also be picking a new eleven-member Council to replace the twenty-one representatives we just elected a month ago.

So starting in May, the twenty-one incumbents will be thrown into an eighteen-month free-for-all for the seven much bigger ward seats or the four citywide seats. Both ward services and normal legislation will collapse in the frenzy of campaigning, deal-making and fundraising. The Jackson Administration's chances of successful governance will collapse with them. And so will Cleveland Democrats' ability to focus on the 2007 Senate and Governor's races -- which, I suspect, is the actual point of this whole effort by Messrs. Kirsanow, Gibbons and George.

Who told the PD editorial page that the smaller Council wouldn't be elected until 2009? Maybe they just made the same mistake I did the first time I looked at this. Or maybe it's what the "Ohio Citizens' League" told them.

If Kirsanow and Co. are the PD's source, then there are two possibilities: They've done a sloppy job of drafting their petition, or they're being (shall we say) disingenuous about their plan. In deciding which possibility is more likely, just bear in mind that Peter Kirsanow is a very expensive lawyer.

THERE GO MY FIFTEEN MINUTES: First Thomas cuts my link out of Cool Cleveland, and now this.

This morning's "Blogosphere Cleveland" in the PD features a quote from this post but attributes it to our friends at Right Angle Blog. Must be some autonomic journalistic response to the name "Blackwell".

I feel so violated.

(Thanks for the heads-up, Tim.)

STRICKLAND POSTED: The transcript and audio of the interview with Congressman Ted Strickland are finally on line at Meet The Bloggers.

CONGRESSMAN STRICKLAND MEETS THE BLOGGERS: Six Cleveland bloggers (George, Tim, Adam, Jack, Gerardo and me) showed up at Talkie's today to quiz the candidate for governor about school finance, business taxes, small-scale economic development, trade policy, municipal home rule, the Third Frontier vs. the digital divide, and more.

The audio should be up this evening at www.meetthebloggers.net. And (drum roll, please) there'll be a transcript soon.

Meanwhile, George live-blogged it, and Adam's account is already posted at Now That's Progress.

(As a fringe benefit, I finally got to meet Jesse Taylor, who used to run Pandagon and gave it up to work for the Strickland campaign.)