This article tries to pull on the heartstrings, but they straight up say the utilities brought in 157MM and paid 142MM in salaries and wages, meaning very specifically not materials costs or logistics costs.
CMP, which provides 80 percent of the state’s residential power, reported $157 million in net income last year — more than the $142 million the company said it spent on total salaries and wages.
The article then refers to this incomplete number as "profits" multiple times, but the utilities have a capex spend of 260 million dollars, through their parent companies - because they don't have the cash-on-hand to do it themselves.
Jon Breed, a spokesman for CMP’s parent company, said that CMP’s rates “are some of the lowest in New England,” and that the parent company also “made more than $260 million in capital investments into Maine.”
I'm not seeing how a government takeover of this utility is going to save anyone any money. Margin rates there, according to the article itself, are near-zero, and acquiring the company and it's infrastructure will incur costs.
How exactly is it a good plan if it's not helping the people? There's no goal of more sustainable infrastructure or radical change in infrastructure policy that will make supplying energy cheaper.
Imo there's a reason the politicians listed are against this plan and it's that the plan sounds good but seems counter-productive for the actual citizens.
I'd much rather see the investment and effort into a state fund that provides emergency energy funding to those who need it - it's already a utility anyway.
I'm very in favor of utilities just being publicly owned, because they basically are anyway, but this plan doesn't seem like a good way to do it.
Without the capital investment this utility has at the moment, the publicly-owned utility company literally would not have the money to fund expansions of infrastructure. That problem needs to be solved in a way that is cheaper for residents for this to be a viable path forward.