Ameren Illinois CEO Scott Cisel followed up his dramatic offer of re-regulation and dumping the controversial reverse power auction with what will assuredly be seen as a take it or leave it offer to the General Assembly…

Ameren’s Illinois electric utilities, besieged by angry customers and lawmakers over dramatic rate hikes, offered on Monday to reinstate a canceled relief package designed to ease the pain of ratepayers — but only if the Legislature stops threatening to roll back the new rates.

Not gonna happen. The “relief” package was way too small. There’s a legislative hearing scheduled for today, so expect the Ameren bigs to get grilled to a crackly crunch.

Meanwhile…

Ameren Illinois could not afford to return to electric rates charged before they were unfrozen in January while discussions about possibly re-regulating the industry occurred, a company official said Monday.

It also is unlikely, because operating costs increased too much while the rate freeze was in place, that re-regulation would enable the rates to fall that low again, said Scott Cisel, CEO of Ameren Illinois.

But re-regulation could be the best long-term solution for price stability, Cisel said during a conference call Monday with the media.

And I loved this one…

Cisel said the perception many customers have that Ameren Corp. is draining cash from its Illinois utilities to keep its profits high is incorrect. He said more than 70 percent of Ameren Corp.’s income is from its electric generation unit in Missouri, which cannot be expected to bail out the utilities in Illinois.

Except that Ameren’s Missouri rates are lower than ours, so we’re subsidizing them.

The Pantagraph took a different tack…

House Speaker Michael Madigan is predicting that high power bills could begin dropping in the “pretty near future.”

While he didn’t name a specific date for when consumers might see some relief from rates that have skyrocketed since a decade-long rate freeze ended Jan. 1, a spokesman for the Chicago Democrat said Monday that pressure is building on Ameren Corp. and ComEd to address the issue.

A key factor in Madigan’s assessment came Sunday when Ameren Illinois President Scott Cisel said it might be time for the state to again regulate utility companies. […]

“What we know is that the prices are way beyond the company needs to make a profit,” Brown said. “My guess is that we’ll be going back to rates probably around the freeze in the pretty near future. We’re getting closer to a real number.”

Squeezing major companies is a long process, and it ain’t over yet.

Alton Telegraph: Ameren officials could feel the heat on two fronts in Springfield today.

Sun-Times editorial: Electricity rate-fixing charges need to be investigated