St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Decision to subsidize Noranda amounts to a new tax
I am thoroughly frustrated as both a resident and rate payer in St. Louis that the Public Service Commission has bowed to politics and allowed Noranda Aluminum in the southeast corner of the state — a private corporation in Missouri with the lowest negotiated industrial electric rate — to now be handed a publicly funded “bailout subsidy” of $1 per month on the backs of Missouri residents and ratepayers!
This is no more than a tax levied on every electric user in the state by a public agency that has no authority to levy taxes.
If the PSC wants bailouts for their favored unions or industrials in the state, then let them — as every other citizen must — address their state representatives in the Legislature who have legal authority to levy taxes.
The PSC has now set a precedent that will allow any commercial electric customer in the state to challenge their contractual rate for power — a legal binding contract — using PR stunts and the political machinery in Jefferson City to bully them into giving concessions to their binding contracted rates.
Shame on the PSC!
