As far as I am concerned, the biggest news of the legislative session is that Commonwealth Edison did not (yet) succeed in bilking more money out of those of us who use electricity.

I’ve told of my first session (1973) in Springfield when I helped pages gather bills to send to various entities who wanted to study their contents.

The only company that was sent two copies was ComEd.

That was the point when I figured out that they were not called the “power” company for nothing.

I’ve also related my Amtrak conversation with electricity mogal Samuel Insull’s (male) secretary.

He told me his boss got tired of paying off legislators for doing h is bidding and successfully pushed a bill to place rate-setting power in the hands of an Illinois Commerce Commission.

Insull figured it would be chaeper to pay off a majority of the ICC than State Senators and Representatives.

That philosophy changed the first decade of this century, when ComEd did not receive the treatment it wanted from the ICC.

When I served in the 1990’s ComEd brought forth a deal that I did not understand.

It offered to freeze its already highest in the Midwest rates for ten years, if the General Assembly would allow it to spin off its nuclear power plants to another corporate entity.

There were two votes, the first of which I opposed for reasons unrelated to what I think the real issue was; the second I supported.

Probably the worst vote of my sixteen years in the Illinois House.

I know little about Federal corporate income tax law, but I do know that physical assets are eventually depreciated down to nothing.

I believe ComEd had reached that point with most of its nuclear power plants.

I also am not an expert in how the ICC figured out rates.

I think the agency figured out what the company had invested and allowed them to level electric rates sufficient to receive an adequate rate of return.

After the bill passed–maybe several years after–it occurred to me that if the nuclear plants were fully depreciated, the amount required to provide the established rate of return would be much, much lower…which would mean much lower electric rates.

(Perhaps someone more knowledgeable in this arcane subject can verify or contradict this line of logic.)

Now it’s more than twenty years later.

The entity to which the nuclear power plants were sold–Exelon–may have fully depreciated the plants and decided to find another way to make money by convincing the General Assembly to raise out electric rates.

when this first happened, the result was campaign contributions (link is to 2011 State Senators) being made and bills being passed and rates going up.

The same approach may be happening now.

We won’t know until campaign disclosure reports are made in July.

There may be another bailout like the so-call Smart Grid bill, which now-indicted ex-ComEd President Ann Pragaggiore admitted in April 2012. (Note Jack Franks’ vote switch announcement in the article.)

It just hasn’t happened yet.