Politics By BARBARA J. HIPSMAN and BOB SPRINGER

Temperatures down — prices up

WE HAD BEGUN winter in an icy fear, "If it's as cold as last year's," we worried, "our heating bills will go through the roof."

The fear was real. Over the months, we had been treated to countless assaults of yet new rounds of rate hikes for natural gas by the Illinois Commerce Commission for this utility or that one, including ours. We'd heard about natural gas deregulation, whose blessing of increased domestic supplies promised the curse of higher prices. A major Midwest gas supplier won price hikes of up to 40 percent in some areas. It had begun importing Algerian liquefied natural gas — among the world's most expensive stock. Between July and mid-December, the commerce commission had given natural gas and electric utilities over $1 billion more annually of customers' disposable incomes. Some of that money was ours. A cold, protracted winter, we were certain, would alter our lifestyles more than anything since the birth of our daughter.

The months passed. November, when we were fooled into thinking it was April. December, still no snow, and Christmas in the 60s. January — a couple of days in the 'teens, but nothing to bother about. By February, with its spring-like days that tricked a few trees around the Statehouse into an early bloom, we couldn't believe it. "That was winter? Maybe for Mississippi, but not the Midwest, NOT Illinois!" we exclaimed.

Mother Nature smiled on us with more than merely a mild winter. It was balmy. In the Champaign-Urbana area, for example, temperatures were more than 20 percent warmer than the previous heating season, and about 13 percent warmer than average.

Our elation, however, was short.

People's Gas, Light & Coke Co., the major heating utility for Chicago, announced it was seeking a new gas rate increase, after having just been given one at winter's start. The reason? Mild weather had cut company income. We gagged; our anxiety was so strong that all utilities, including ours, would follow suit. "Now they want us to pay more for what we don't use, too," we thought in disbelief as blood racing to our heads approached boiling stage.

We compared our own December heating bills back to 1979. The winter of 1979-80 was the first break for most of Illinois after three of the more brutal, back-to-back winters most care to remember.

We gagged again.

Our gas use last December was 28 percent less than for December 1979. Much of the decline was the weather; part of it was our search for better insulation and conservation methods. But our heating bill this most recent December was nearly 47 percent higher than for the same month in 1979.

That means our real gas costs rose by a staggering 103 percent during the three-year period. Better than a 34-percent-per-year average increase for natural gas!

That rate about quadruples the inflation rate for the period. Inflation, meanwhile, which includes energy costs, outstripped our growth in wages — or ability to pay.

Suddenly, the complex and intensely frustrating debate over rising energy costs versus conservation came into sharp focus for us: It didn't make any sense. Neither, apparently, is it making sense to a growing number of Illinois utility customers and state legislators.

By the time Gov. James R. Thompson the first week of March delivered his proposed budget, no less than eight bills had been introduced in the House and the Senate calling for an elected commerce commission, instead of the five-member regulatory board appointed by the governor.

For many people disturbed over the incomprehensible pricing of such a vital commodity as energy, electing the utility regulatory board has become their panacea. A year ago, Sen. Vince Demuzio (D-49, Carlinville), grafted such a measure onto a bill repealing the inheritance tax. The entire bill cleared the Senate — the furthest the elected commerce commission concept had gone. But it withered in the House, which had another inheritance tax repeal bill handy to send to Thompson.

Demuzio is hopeful of General Assembly approval this season. The utilities will marshal their considerable acumen to try to defeat it; Thompson swears to veto it. Most realists know an elected commission won't solve the problem anyway.

Ironically, a chief force working against the concept's success in the past has been weather. By late spring, when lawmakers get down to serious business, warm temperatures have dissipated winter's cold anger. The current forecast calls for more of the same.□

April 1983 | Illinois Issues | 4