Let’s turn all debts into weatherizing

If I were to borrow money from my local bank to buy a car and then, when payment became due, demand to pay it back by weatherizing the bank, the bank would be entirely justified in telling me to pound sand.

Apparently, however, the Public Service Department believes that the same principles of good faith and fair dealing that apply to ordinary citizens don’t apply to our public utilities, which are allowed to change the terms of a deal after it’s been struck.

Ordinarily, I would agree that it’s bad public policy for the Legislature to interfere in a pending regulatory matter. But when the terms of a deal are as fundamentally unfair as those of the proposed GMP-CVPS merger, I agree with Paul Poirier that the Legislature has a superseding obligation to act in the public interest.

It’s telling that, in a political climate as divisive as ours, this issue has united Republicans, Democrats and Progressives. The lawmakers who support the GMP deal need to understand that there is a great deal of bipartisan anger about the apparent double standard embedded in the transaction and that voters across the political spectrum will remember this when they go to the polls in November.

Phil Keller

Montpelier