The prospect of “earning” billions of dollars over time is driving the current owners of Central Maine Power and Versant to fight tooth and nail to maintain control.

Regulators guarantee these monopolies generous rates of return on equity invested as recompense for their services. In addition, they are allowed to defer a significant amount of taxes: the cumulative value of deferred income taxes reported by the two utilities now stands at over $1 billion.

Numbers on the finances of CMP and Versant are hard to come by. Maine’s Public Utility Commission does not make the annual reports it receives from them available to the public. And,  although some data is included in the PUC’s own annual reports, the information is not sufficient for estimating the profitability of these Maine utilities.

We do know the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has set a 10.57% return for transmission assets, and Maine’s PUC has set the return for distribution assets at 9.35%. With assets valued at over $1 billion (Versant) and over $4 billion (CMP), the base to which these rates apply translates into many millions.

Since CMP and Versant are no longer U.S. companies, few of these millions stay in Maine.

It is ironic that owners of CMP and Versant are warning Mainers of the risk of taking their guaranteed billions away from them. As advocates of Pine Tree Power argue, wouldn’t it be riskier to leave control of the future of Maine’s electricity in the hands of companies that fight accountability?

Marianne Hill, South Portland