Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Bruce S. Post, a former staffer for Sen. Robert Stafford, R-Vt., and a policy director for Gov. Richard Snelling.
Energy goliaths Green Mountain Power, Central Vermont Public Service and Gaz Metro of Quebec are on the verge of a grand merger of gigantic proportions. A look back at the often‐contentious struggle between private utilities and the public interest might illumine the significance of what could be the final victory of large energy conglomerates over Vermont state government and, ultimately, Vermont consumers.
The history of electric power generation, transmission and distribution in Vermont is long, complex and instructive. It dramatizes how aggressive energy behemoths and the large personalities of a few energy executives have exerted enormous economic, political and public relations clout in Vermont. Certain prominent Vermont governors have tried pushing back against this insidious influence. Their successes, on balance, were mostly modest, and the lopsided equation of power largely favored – and still favors – the private utilities.
Now, with the pending Central Vermont Public Service/Green Mountain Power merger, it appears that Goliath, rather than David, will emerge victorious.
The first energy Goliath was Sam Insull, an out‐of‐state power broker extraordinaire who dominated Vermont’s energy scene in the 1920s and into the early 1930s. He had large ambitions to build an energy empire controlling much of Vermont’s and New England’s electric power resources. With the stock market bust, the financial underpinnings of these audacious schemes collapsed. Then, a homegrown David, George David Aiken, took up the fight against the private utilities and their supremacy. As governor, Aiken advanced the cause of rural electric cooperatives, but for all his suspicions about and criticisms of private utilities, his skeptical view of federal control weakened his punch. The private utilities lived to fight another day.
That day and another Goliath were not long in coming. In 1936, Bert Cree became CEO of the Central Vermont Public Service Corporation, serving for 33 years. He constantly undermined efforts to provide a public counterbalance to the private utilities’ control over Vermont.
In the late 1940’s, Cree’s foil was Gov. Ernest Gibson, Jr., the next David defending the public interest. A consistent critic of private utilities and an advocate of an enhanced state role in electric power, Gibson unslung his slingshot by proposing a state‐based Vermont Power Authority. Cree turned his dogs loose, and Gibson’s plans were mauled in 1949 after a flurry of charges, some in Vermont newspapers, that Gibson’s idea reeked of “socialism” and “communism.”
Ever vigilant, Cree seemingly never slept. He went on to propose and establish VELCO in the 1950s as a reaction to proposals to have the state of Vermont control the importation and transmission of power from the St. Lawrence. Foreshadowing the proposed GMP/CVPS merger, Bert Cree audaciously proposed in 1952 that all private, cooperative and municipal utilities be consolidated into one – under the CVPS umbrella.
In the 1960s, Governor Philip Hoff, the third incarnation of a Vermont David, proposed plans for the state to import Canadian hydro power. Cree waged an epic battle and orchestrated the successful killing of Hoff’s vision, which threatened to abort the birth of Cree’s stepchild: Vermont Yankee.
This history of private utility dominance is still being written today as the Public Service Board reviews the merger plans of CVPS and GMP as part of the out‐of-country Gaz Metro megalith. One could ask the question: Is Mary Powell, CEO of Green Mountain Power, the latest incarnation of Sam Insull and Bert Cree? Is she the latest Goliath? Certainly, Powell has strategic insider advantage with the Shumlin Administration, but more likely, she is the pleasant front‐person for the true successor to the Insull and Cree empires: Gaz Metro.
Yes, Vermont’s David and Goliath battles over electric power have all the ingredients of a thriller: intrigue, cronyism, financial chicanery, gossip and raw political power.
Yet, today, a new description could be added: Ironic. Why?
Several prominent Vermont historians believe that Windham County Republicans George Aiken and Ernest Gibson, Jr., with their independent streaks of positive progressivism, prepared the fertile soil out of which the modern Vermont Democratic Party was able to grow and flourish, leading to the election of Phil Hoff.
Given this assessment, it may be the ultimate irony that another governor from Windham County, Democrat Peter Shumlin, has eschewed the role of David, enabling instead, with the collaboration of many prominent members of the Democratic elite, the final victory of Goliath, a triumph Sam Insull and Bert Cree undoubtedly would savor: near total dominance over the Vermont market.
