Great Fallls Tribune

 

October 12, 2008

 

Focusing city's audit on electric utility is a good idea

Considering public tension surrounding the city of Great Falls' dealings with the electric cooperative that wants to build a coal-fired power plant nearby, the city manager's decision last week to focus an audit on those dealings was a good one.

The occasion is the city's annual audit by an outside accounting firm, and the specifics are that Manager Greg Doyon is asking the auditor to put a "special emphasis" on Electric City Power, the city's utility that is a member of the Southern Montana Electric Generation and Transmission co-op.

The back story on this is fairly involved, but our punch line on it is that Doyon's request is prudent and helpful.

The back story

Montana's constitutional and statutory requirements for open government meetings and records are among the best in the nation, creating — in theory at least — an atmosphere of sunshine and honesty.

In the 36 years since the state Constitution took effect, that atmosphere has almost continually brightened, board by board, commission by commission, as elected officials and the private concerns that work with them became accustomed — voluntarily or not — to doing the public's business in public.

There are trouble spots, however, and the most troublesome involve "public-private partnerships" — enterprises in which a public function is contracted out to a private business, or in which a public entity joins with a private one to provide a service.

The law is not well developed in this area, but the intent of the Constitution shines through the gray areas like a beacon, clearly in favor of a presumption of openness.

The relationship of the city, ECP and SME is one of those trouble spots — troublesome not because they're in business together, but because the business isn't transparent to the public.

The city is a member of the SME co-op and ECP buys power from it. SME also hopes to take its energy future in its own hands by building the 250-megawatt Highwood Generating Station northeast of town.

We're guessing the co-op didn't want some of the documents related to the relationship made public — co-ops are accustomed to being accountable to their members, but not necessarily to the public.

The Montana Environmental Information Center, which opposes the coal-fired plant, filed suit in May 2007 seeking release of those documents, and the Montana Newspaper Association joined MEIC's case six months later.

In June, Judge E. Wayne Phillips of Lewistown ruled that "the mere fact that it might be more convenient for the city to negotiate beyond the public's view does not alter the constitutional requirement that the government conduct its business openly."

It was such a good ruling we almost regret that the city didn't appeal it so that the Supreme Court could add its imprimatur to Phillips' ruling.

As a result of the ruling, most of the documents (not all of them), were released in July and citizens have been sifting through them since.

Beyond the court case, anyone who's attended or watched a City Commission meeting in the past year has a sense of the mistrust and contention that surrounds the coal-fired plant and the city's involvement in it.

The operation of Electric City Power is just a part of that bigger picture, but it's a significant part.

The original point

And that brings us back to our original point: City Manager Doyon is smart to have the city's annual audit focus attention on ECP.

We don't expect the auditors to find wrongdoing. We do hope they will provide the public with a better understanding of ECP's operation.

"People have asked questions that I think need to be answered," Doyon said.