The mess at City Light

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Seattle City Light is asking for $1 million to fix its computer. The more interesting question is what the citizen-owners should do to straighten out City Light.

The whole idea of public power, as envisioned by the progressives of 95 years ago, was that by not taking profit, the customer-owners could enjoy electricity rates below that of private power companies. For nearly a century, they did. Now, rates at City Light are higher than at Puget Sound Energy.

The reason is not the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, California, environmentalists, Enron or the rain god. Puget faced those things. Tacoma Power faced those things. That Seattle came out particularly poorly — with a 58-percent rate increase and $3,000 in debt for every man, woman and child in the city — is Seattle's fault.

The City Council has appropriated money for an audit that would ask what went wrong and how it might be fixed. Done properly, an audit will tell us many things we need to know. But there are some things that are obvious already.

Start with management. The superintendent of City Light, Gary Zarker, is a political appointee. He was named in 1994 by Mayor Norm Rice. He kept his job through the reign of Mayor Paul Schell and has been reappointed by his West Seattle friend, Mayor Greg Nickels. Zarker is well-connected. He is a better administrator than his predecessor, Roberta Palm Bradley. What he has not done well is made big decisions about energy.

There was, for example, the decision in 1996, when the market price was low, to give up special rights for federal power. There was the decision in 2000 to sell off City Light's stake in the Chehalis coal plant, to look green — as though the environment could be improved by a change of ownership. There was the decision in the summer of 2001 to cast aside the chance to buy long-term power and to face the winter naked.

A CEO with such a record might be told by the board of directors that it was time to go.

Of the 10 top municipal utilities in the United States, Seattle City Light is the only one without its own board of directors. Hiring and firing the superintendent is up to the mayor; electric rates are up to the City Council.

In 2000, the designated member of the council for overseeing City Light was Heidi Wills. She was in her first term of office, having previously been a policy analyst for Ron Sims on the subject of fish. She had run for office on a platform of promoting bus passes, recycling and the recovery of salmon — all nice Seattle things, none of them central to the oversight of a billion-dollar utility.

What City Light needed was expertise in the new world of power contracts. It also needed an ability to judge risk and jump quickly. That is a skill not often associated with public employment, but it can be had. City Light does not have it. It had better get it, because the citizens of Seattle cannot afford to own a utility without it.