Power Play

Councilor Patti Bushee, who called a press conference to announce the plan a few hours before the City Council meeting on Dec. 10, says that, in theory, she supports the idea of creating a taxpayer-funded utility to replace PNM in delivering power to Santa Feans.

But while the idea gains traction under a new mayoral administration and City Council, the District 1 representative's open skepticism of the city's current path toward municipalization has drawn sharp criticism from its most vocal proponents in the infant stages of the debate.

Mariel Nanasi, the executive director of the nonprofit New Energy Economy, accuses Bushee of taking "our city backward, not forward" with her resolution.

Councilor Ron Trujillo has joined Bushee in sponsoring the measure. She issued a statement claiming an additional three councilors including Councilor Bill Dimas would co-sponsor her plan, intimating that it already carried a Council majority. But it's unclear now which side the remaining councilors will take.

"I don't think we as a city have the money to do it anyway. So I'm not sure where the money would come from to own our utility company," says District 4 Councilor Bill Dimas. "That's where I'm at right now."

Dimas tells SFR he hasn't had a chance to look at the measure closely enough to determine whether he supports it.

The governing body was already weighing a resolution by a competing set of councilors—Joseph Maestas, Chris Rivera and Peter Ives—that would direct city staff to collaborate with the county to "explore, research and analyze the next steps" in creating a public utility company identified by a 2012 study commissioned by the pro-municipalization nonprofit New Energy Economy.

That resolution, which also has the verbal backing of the mayor, renewed the debate on whether Santa Fe should start throwing more taxpayer money behind studying what it would take to create a public utility company.

Nanasi told councilors that Bushee's measure is problematic because it calls for the city to collaborate with the company, whose energy portfolio consists of mainly coal and nuclear power, "at a time when we are already experiencing climate disruption—greatly reduced snow impact, warmer days, greater fire danger, including the worst two fires in New Mexico history in the last five years."

As Nanasi's husband, Santa Fe lawyer Jeffrey Haas, put it to city councilors: "If the City of Santa Fe were trying to negotiate to try to cut down on cigarette smoking, would we have the cigarette manufacturers part of our plan to do that? I don't think we would."

Localities attempting to create municipal utilities sometimes do so when their franchise agreements with private power companies are set to expire. Bushee's resolution also calls for the city to renew its franchise agreement with PNM, which PNM notes in its February 2014 annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission has already expired.

"Although PNM is not required to collect or pay franchise fees in some areas it services," its SEC filing reads, "the utility continues to collect and pay such fees in certain parts of its service territory, including Albuquerque, Rio Rancho and Santa Fe."

A draft of the resolution also calls for the city to create a "climate protection action plan" that would establish an "energy vision." It would create a city team to work with PNM and New Mexico Oil and Gas Company representatives to form partnerships that would work on five environmental policy goals.

Mayor Javier Gonzales has indicated the resolution is at odds with his own Climate Change task force. He didn't return a call by press time.

Bushee says that the resolution is a "working draft."

"Everybody's kind of like campaigning on the idea" of municipalization, she says, "but nobody's ponying up the money to study what it would take to actually buy [PNM's infrastructure]."

She disputes Gonzales' previous comments, printed in the Santa Fe New Mexican raising concerns that the resolution calls for a process that's not transparent.

"I really truly don't want this to be a political football," she says, but said that "for whatever reason" New Energy Economy is undertaking a "major mischaracterization campaign" about the proposal.

Efforts by municipalities across the nation to purchase distribution systems from private power companies have met mixed success. A successful purchase of PNM's system could be an endeavor that lasts a decade if history is any measure. One important early step in that process is accurately appraising the infrastructure for its electric grid. Those appraisals must also account for a company's investment in that infrastructure.

Value estimates so far vary dramatically, with PNM saying it sank $40.6 million into the system in the last five years and New Energy Economy commissioned study saying the city could acquire the distribution system for between $155 and $255 million.

While PNM had been relatively quite about the renewed efforts to talk about municipalization, its PR machine was in full swing when Bushee met with the press.

Jodi McGinnis Porter, a PNM spokeswoman, sent reporters a press release the same day touting Bushee's resolution, saying that is "shows leadership by bringing together all the major stakeholders to address important and complex issues."

"We believe that positive results come out of honest collaboration with communities that reflect all of our diverse customer needs and values," the statement, which is attributed to Ron Darnell, PNM's vice president for public policy, reads.

To Bushee, if the city moves forward with municipalization on the long term, it should bring PNM to the table to achieve renewable energy goals in the short term.

"This possibility of a [public] utility is so far out in the future, I want to know what I can get here and now and today," Bushee says. "I'm sick of waiting for community solar."

Santa Fe Reporter