🔌 Maine's biggest utility gets its counterattack on the 2023 ballot.
◉ When voters decide in November whether to replace the state's two biggest electric utilities with a consumer-owned alternative, they will also contend with a utility-authored question that aims to blunt the effect of that first referendum.
◉ The latter proposal, which would subject certain public borrowing over $1 billion to a referendum vote, is championed by No Blank Checks, a political group that has been almost solely funded to date by the parent company of Central Maine Power Co. and is led by Democratic operative Willy Ritch.
◉ Passage of both questions would force another vote to effectively set up the consumer-owned utility, since it will require billions of dollars in borrowing for the new public entity to buy out the infrastructure of CMP and Versant Power, the state's other dominant utility. Figuring out that price could take years. |
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