A modest proposal for PGE

Now that Texas Pacific has admitted what was a latently obvious fact — that it’s buying PGE with the hope of reducing overhead, increasing profits, and selling it for a big profit in a few years, a laudable motive — how shall the PUC deal with its request to buy PGE?  Let’s assume that the City of Portland doesn’t put together a plausible bid for the company, and that Texas Pacific is the only serious bidder.

The main reason I don’t like out-of-state ownership of our public utilities is that Portland has lost most of its public company corporate headquarters (PGE, PP&L, Fred Meyer, Willamette Industries, Georgia-Pacific, Louisiana-Pacific, and U.S. Bank, to name a few of the last 20 or so years) and not replaced them.   It makes sense for electric companies to be headquartered where their customers are, and there’s little economy of scale in combining them into multi-state conglomerates.  (Does anyone remember PEPCO?)

Here’s Isaac’s suggestion to the PUC:  allow the Texas Pacific bid to go forward, but require Texas Pacific to offer PGE for sale as a public offering — not a negotiated private sale — no later than five years from now, and thereafter prohibit any further acquisition.  If you can’t bring PGE back to Oregon now, bring it back later.