* More bad news for Ameren. AG Madigan to investigate Ameren’s “all-electric” program

Responding to consumer complaints about soaring electric rates, Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced Monday she is investigating the way Ameren Corp. promoted its so-called all-electric discount program.

In a release issued Monday, Madigan alleged that Ameren promoted and encouraged customers to sign up for the discounted rate program long after the company knew the discount would be eliminated.

Ameren spokesman Leigh Morris denied the charge.

“Those rates have not been promoted in at least a decade, and I’m confident much longer than that,” Morris said Monday. […]

“If Ameren was promoting this discount plan to residential and business consumers or to builders after it knew the discount would disappear shortly, then we need to know about it,” she said in the release.

Madigan didn’t just jump on this right away. She took her time to quietly look into the situation before announcing the investigation. There are reports out there about people and businesses being urged to take advantage of the discount as late las last June. Ameren could be in for another world of hurt.

* Pat Gauen puts the blame on legislators for the mess, but makes no mention of the ICC’s blatantly skewed reverse auction plan.

The power company is in business foremost to make money for stockholders, not to save money for consumers. We elected legislators to do that. They are the ones who signed off on this plan.

It was a gamble that not everybody’s lawmakers took. Missouri’s didn’t, and now our next-door neighbors have no comparable angst. California did deregulate, then tried to hold down rate increases and in the process darned near collapsed the state’s electric system.

Now fully awake after a 10-year nap, Illinois electricity customers are baying at Springfield for relief from what amounts to a lost bet. It’s as if we put our cash on black at the Casino Queen and demanded a refund after the roulette ball landed on red.

Except, this isn’t a game of chance, it’s a game of politics. And the people didn’t bet on deregulation at all. We bet on getting a good outcome from the General Assembly. It turns out that, like it or not, Ameren and the state’s other power companies find themselves betting on the same.

As of this writing, legislators were reaching for that roulette ball, with no clear indication of where they will finally put it.

* But the Herald & Review editorial hits all the notes in a piece entitled, Remember rate hikes at the ballot box…

What we have here are elected officials who saw a problem approaching but didn’t do anything about it, a commerce commission that allowed the utilities to railroad them into an unfair process, a leading legislator who won’t even allow an issue to come to a vote because of his support for one of the utilities and a governor who sits by and does little.

* Two GOP Senators haven’t actually organized any protest, but are asking people (through the media) to bring their bills to the Statehouse…

Republican state Sens. John Jones of Mt. Vernon, Dale Risinger of Peoria and Bill Brady of Bloomington are asking anyone burned by higher power rates to bring copies of their bloated bills to the governor’s office before he gives his annual address. […]

So far the senators are unaware of any groups chartering buses or carpooling from their districts. For their part, security staff at the Capitol say they are not planning any extra measures in anticipation of rowdy power-bill toting crowd.

* On a mostly unrelated note, check out how local school districts are upset about allegedly being gouged for not reading the fine print…

The biggest advocates for Illinois’ school boards and administrators have been making millions of dollars off school districts and taxpayers, court and financial records show.

The Illinois Association of School Boards, the Illinois Association of School Business Officials and the Illinois Association of School Administrators set up a non-profit energy company in 1999 to help school districts get better deals on electricity and gas.

But to the surprise of many school officials, the Illinois Energy Consortium, as the company is called, has been charging the districts fees that have nothing to do with utility service. The financial details are disclosed in a Cook County Circuit Court lawsuit filed in June.