It is interesting to note that the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry is against the City of Chicago`s proposed takeover of Comonwealth Edison`s franchise. Big deal! Where was this association when, during a period of construction (which normally means belt-tightening) the company`s stock dividends rose from $116 million to $730 million and the stockholders` equity rose from $759 million to $7 billion? All of this while the electricity rates per kilowatt hour increased 242 percent while the Consumers` Price Index rose by only 130 percent!
It may require a higher powered computer than is available at this association to figure out that figures such as these are not conducive to the growth of commerce or industry, including the long-range effect on Edison. It, like all of the commercial and industrial establishments in the area, needs long-term growth. Here is what we are getting because of the high electric rates: a growth in state product of only about one-half of the growth of the gross national product; the loss of the supercollider because the national taxpayers would have had to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars annually over what they will pay for power in Texas; the loss of the new Inland Steel- Nippon steel plant, the Fuji-Izusu plant, the Chrysler-Mitsubishi plant and many others-with the subsequent movement of jobs elsewhere; an unemployment rate substantially higher than the national average, etc.
I hold no brief, one way or another, with the City of Chicago`s taking over its own power supply, but the last words of the letter, ”cut the best deal possible with Com Ed” seem to be hinting that the rates should be set politically instead of following the law which states that they will be ”just and reasonable.” We have had enough of this, and what we are getting is a percent profit for Com Ed, about four times that of the median of Fortune 500 companies and about 50 percent higher on sales than that of IBM. For a company that depends upon a fair and impartial setting of rates by the public officials, it is atrocious.
