Here’s the link I promised in today’s Capitol Fax. And here are the relevant paragraphs:

SPEAKER MADIGAN: I think we ought to spend a lot of time on electric utility deregulation because, although Illinois appears to have successfully transitioned to deregulation, there’s a lot of serious issues to be addressed in terms of electric utility deregulation.

Number one would be the rate freeze that was put in place. At the time, it was argued that this would be beneficial for ratepayers, especially residential ratepayers. Over time, a legitimate question has been put, “Well, although we put a lid on what the rates might be, we may have also put a floor on what the rates could be.” And competition over the last couple years, without the rate freeze, may have driven those rates lower than they are right now.

In addition, we provided for what they call stranded costs at the time of the electric utility deregulation, which is an industry way of saying that the mistakes of the utility companies, notably Commonwealth Edison, in building nuclear plants would be paid for by the ratepayers. We did that.

Having done that, having done the rate freeze, you’re now looking at a cliff, in terms of where you go with cost for the utility companies and for the rates.

In the case of the telephone companies, there has been a great change in telephone service. You probably carry a cell phone. And so all of that should be reviewed now, rather than later, because of the dramatic changes in the industry and technology.

ILLINOIS ISSUES: The argument is that a move to a more free-market system would benefit everyone?

MADIGAN: And in the case of the phone regulation — privately, I put the question, and I guess I’ll put it publicly right now: Why couldn’t we follow the model that we followed in electric utility deregulation, where, in essence, we made Commonwealth Edison and the other distribution companies common carriers and took them out of the generation business. Why couldn’t we just make SBC a common carrier for distribution and take them out of the other aspects of it. I’m sure they have some kind of response, but I think it’s a question that ought to be put.

If you were to do that, then there’s a little more rhyme and reason to this idea that they’re deregulated, but the legislature or the Commerce Commission is setting the rate for wholesale sales from people like SBC to the others.