Mayor's Row...by Ned Mitchell
Remember my instructions to readers last week about the AmerenCips shuffle? The last thing I said was for readers to follow the money. Taking that a little bit farther than perhaps some of you have had time to do, I did just that, followed the money. Since 1993 Commonwealth Edison from northern Illinois has sent $2,429,000.00, that's two million, four hundred twenty nine thousand dollars directly into the pockets of Illinois politicians. Now this does not count what AmerenCips and other utility companies have forked over. The next question is where exactly did this $2.4 million dollars come from? You guessed it right if you said from consumers. Here is the deal. Through our monthly power and gas utility bills we are contributing to politicians all over this state that are 100% in the hip pocket of the major utility providers in Illinois. This money is corporate money that is raised through monthly utility bills from me and you and then handed out to politicians in the name of good government. What a joke!
Where did this money go you ask? The bulk of it went to Senate President Emil Jones a democrat and his republican counterpart Senator Frank Watson. They also bought their way in to the House of Representatives when they dumped boxes of cash on republican house leader Representative Tom Cross. One has to give ComEd a lot of credit; they have been bipartisan in spreading their cash around. They have bought both the democrats and republicans in the State Senate and the republican leader in the House of Representatives. When did this influx of cash begin? It all started immediately after the 10 year rate freeze was voted in as law. Utility companies fought that plan tooth and nail and lost. They immediately began laying the groundwork to insure that when the 10 year freeze was up, they would not be denied again and they have been successful, using our money against us!
This story gets better though. To be sure of success ComEd piled the money on the republicans when they were in charge of the State Senate and also on the democrat leadership when they were in the minority in the State Senate. How could they miss? Once the democrats took control of the State Senate, no problem, ComEd has been a major contributor of Senate President Emil Jones. Now they have both sides, no matter who is in the majority. Just where do you think the rate issue is bottled up? Not in the House of Representatives where Speaker Mike Madigan controls everything right down to how much water Representatives are allowed to drink and when they may be excused to go to the restroom. Legislation is bottled up in the State Senate and neither democrats or republicans want the issue out. Any chance at reforming the rate increase is dead in the water once it hits the State Senate. Utility companies wisely figured out they only needed influence in one branch of state government. Why spend all that money when you don't need to? That way you can pay executives millions of dollars in salary and stock options every year. Who cares? I can tell you who does not care and that is the politicians in Illinois who make these decisions. Sadly it is all legal in Illinois.
So lets' take this one step farther and apply the good old Sesser test. Suppose the Sesser City council and I discover a huge oil reserve on city property. The profits from this find add up to millions of dollars for Sesser. Along comes some consumer bunch of kooks and legislation is proposed to tax our millions of dollars in oil money or better yet, freeze our profits for the next 10 years. We get our collective heads together and decide we need to start contributing large amounts of money either to Senators or Representatives from both parties in Illinois. Using the same formula the utility companies have, we decide to be very kind to both democrat and republican leadership in the State Senate. We start writing very large checks. All we want is to be heard. We want both democrats and republicans alike to listen to our point of view and we are willing to pay for the time. Are you beginning to get the picture? If the legislation to freeze our profits or to tax them is passed in the House of Representatives, no worry, we have our bases covered over in the Senate. The legislation is going nowhere!
So all of this malarkey that is being passed around about extending the freeze on utility costs is just that, malarkey! This is a double whammy for a lot of folks. If you have an all electric house; you can plan on your monthly bill to double. If you heat with gas, wood, coal, kerosene or some other method, your bill will go up 55% and this is just the beginning. Not only is your own monthly bill going to greatly increase, so will your cost of goods and services. It will cost Sesser twice as much to treat the sewer waste. It will cost twice as much to pump water to your house. The cost of food will go up as it has to be cooled or frozen. The cost of everything you do will go up because the merchant involved is also watching their utility bill jump sky high.
Never fear though, you can rest assured your friendly local utility provider will soon be back at the tax funded trough in Springfield asking for more money. After all, elections are expensive and if you are contributing millions of dollars in cash, one has to have some sort of means to recoup the cost of doing business. We, you and I, my friends have been had. Once again we have played the game and lost. Oh well, its' only money!
Congratulations to the Sesser-Valier cheerleading squad, parents, fans, sponsors, and coaches as they finished 6th place in state competition last Saturday. When you go to competition that includes all schools covering the entire State of Illinois and come away with the 6th place award you have done something. We are always proud of each and every student in our school system and when they work as hard as this group of young ladies has and win, it makes us all the more proud of them and their accomplishments. Most of us have no idea how much time and effort goes into preparing for this type of competition but let me assure you many hours of hard work have been required and a lot of personal sacrifices made to be this successful. We at City Hall are extremely proud of these young people. They have represented their school and city very well!
Sesser resident Verna Queen is undergoing tests and treatment in a St. Louis hospital as of this writing. She should possibly be home by the time this column is published. A card, phone call, or personal visit would be appreciated.
New street signs will soon be installed on State Highways 148 and 154 that will mark our streets to where even I can read the signs without glasses. The new signs will be 6 inches tall and as wide as necessary to spell out the name of the street. They will have a green background with white reflective writing. The project is being funded by money left over from the Centennial celebration. We think you will like these new signs as they will add a nice touch to our town and will be a big help to those traveling to Sesser. We will work on replacing all the signs in town in the near future. The signs in neighborhoods will be a little smaller using the same color scheme. We have a sample sign on display at the Opera House Café if you would like to see them.
We received a grant in the amount of $6,750.00 last week from the Illinois Arts Council that will help pay for performances this summer by the Chicago Chamber Orchestra. They will have three performances in June this year the week following our annual Homecoming celebration. There will be two concerts and one opera and we will make information such as times and dates available in the near future.
If you need us, give us a call at 625-3611 or 625-5322 or write to nedmitchell@verizon.net or www.sesser.org or P. O. Box 277, Sesser, IL 62884.
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