What should be done with Portland General Electric?

PGE, the state's largest electric utility, is up for grabs. Now that its parent company, Enron, has been exposed as the disgraceful house of cards that it was, folks around Oregon have been talking about the next owner for PGE. Word from the Enron bankruptcy is that Enron (or whatever it's called these days) won't be emerging with PGE -- one of its few legitimate businesses -- still in hand.

So who will get it?

The would-be buyers have been kicking the tires, but only a few are left. The City of Portland is expressing a strong interest. And the Naderite public power advocates in Portland, who have been trying for years to get PGE or large chunks of it into public ownership, are getting ready to launch yet another initiative campaign to form a public utility district (PUD) to run the company. With the Enron scandal continuing to make headlines, the public power folks sense, probably quite correctly, that the time is as right as it's ever going to get.

Private power companies are wasting no time in fighting back. Preemptive strike television ads are already appearing, arguing that public power is a bad idea. One of the private firms' likely motives is the fact that PUDs get first call on power produced by the federal Bonneville Power Administration, which as any visitor to the dams on the Lower Columbia River will attest, creates one huge flow of electricity by turning the once-raging river into a series of lakes.

The uncertainty about the future of this once-proud Orgon enterprise is quite disconcerting. Particularly the City of Portland's wanting to become a player in the energy business.

The city (led by Commissioner Sten) likely has little or no idea what it's doing. It can't run a water bureau. The last time it played big businessman and went behind closed doors to hammer out a contract with a cigar-chewing operator in secret, it came out with the Civic Stadium fiasco that will be costing municipal taxpayers a bundle for years. (Ironically, the stadium was soon thereafter renamed PGE Park). And the city's last foray into keeping utility rates down was to embark on a costly and futile campaign to force the cable TV companies to allow other internet providers to use their wires.

Please, Erik, give it a rest. Your heart may be in the right place -- it would be nice if the city could save the ratepayers some money -- but you have no clue.

Has anybody at City Hall noticed that there's no private utility making a serious play for PGE? Has it dawned on anyone that there's a good reason why other prospective buyers are dropping out of the bidding like flies? Could Enron and its creditors be looking to pull one last fast one on an unwitting sucker? Portland taxpayers, be afraid -- be very, very afraid.

But if City Hall does the smart thing and quietly backs off, who will the lucky purchaser be? It could be the PUD folks, led by my old law school classmate and former law firm co-worker Dan Meek. It's great to have a smart (and smart-mouthed) guy like Meek telling it like it is -- Enron skimming Oregon tax payments from PGE and then not paying any Oregon tax, for example -- but he may be too clever by half. When he appeared next to the likes of Don McIntyre in TV ads last fall, unfairly slinging mud at the judges of Oregon, Meek lost major points in my eyes. (I think he was bitter after a big loss in the State Supreme Court a few years previously.) He doesn't always demonstrate the level head that might make a PUD work.

But Meek sure as heck knows more about the energy business than most folks at Portland City Hall will ever understand. And so he might in fact turn out to be a formidable force. Another PUD election will be very interesting indeed.

But where are the clowns? Send in the clowns... don't bother, they're here. "They" being the Oregon Legislature, of course. Although Enron didn't pay Oregon income tax from PGE's operations, our state's fine downstate representatives are throwing a monkey wrench into the bankruptcy proceedings by bitching that public power would mean less revenue for the state. They're talking about blocking a public takeover, although one wonders whether Governor Ted would get behind that.

In short, it's a muddled mess at this point. But as a taxpayer of Portland, and a noncustomer of PGE (at our house, we get the juice from Scottish-owned PacifiCorp), I'm rooting for some as-yet unnamed corporate white knight to buy PGE. And if that doesn't happen, a PUD that I'm not in.

We taxpayers don't need to have the city involved in the cut-throat, risky, shady business that deregulated energy has become. At least not with the level of utility expertise (and I use the term advisedly) that's in charge of the city's interests at the moment.