The Los
Angeles Department of Water and Power will hike rates to cover some of its lost
revenue, its board decided Tuesday. Why has it experienced the drop in revenue
you ask? Because consumers have done what they’ve been instructed to do by
their governmental masters: conserve water during this recent four-year
drought. Many consumers are taking much shorter showers than in the past and
have even replaced their yards with drought-tolerant landscaping, among other
measures to limit water usage.
The result of this sacrifice,
this community spirit, this massive conservation effort is that consumers will
have to pay more money to make up for their conservation! Less water purchased
from the utilities has meant less revenues for them as well, with many now
operating in the red. Officials now claim that they need to pass some of the
costs back to customers.
“The reality is that rate
increases, surcharges and other pricing adjustments are part of the drought
story this year,” Association of California Water Agencies spokeswoman Lisa
Lien-Mager said. As revenues drop, utilities still must cover fixed costs, and
keep paying employees, maintaining pipes, treatment facilities, aqueducts and
reservoirs. They have also incurred additional
costs during the drought, for ‘public outreach’ and ‘enforcing’ water-use
restrictions. Get that? They’ve taken money that their customers have paid in
and used it to badger them into using less water…and then raised these same
customers rates because they did!!
Where is the outrage??!
Neil
Guglielmo, a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power budget official, said
“Our customers have done a tremendous job of conserving water, which is great
for the city, but it means there is an impact to our financials.”
Yes,
well, in a free market, supply and
demand would rule. Private companies must lower
rates when demand falls. And, whenever private
companies raise their rates, for whatever reason, government hounds them
and lectures them about ‘greed’ and the ‘plight of the less fortunate.’ Private
companies must react to falling demand by innovating, increasing efficiencies
and/or laying off employees, all of which are anathema to government.
Government will never shrink itself, or even go on a diet, though it
expects any business not “too big to fail” to starve to death.
So,
apparently, it is okay for the government
to raise rates because of the falling demand that it caused, but it’s not
okay for private companies to raise
rates for legitimate reasons when their
cost of doing business increases.
Incredible.
Hypocrisy, thy name is government.
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