The global energy giant Iberdrola has petitioned for a free pass from the Maine Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in its bid to become the sole owner of Central Maine Power’s parent company, Avangrid. This should not be granted. Right now, state regulators are deciding whether to investigate the potential impacts this massive corporate deal would have on Maine ratepayers – or to allow it to proceed with no further questions.

In Maine, there have been years of public debate about the ownership of Central Maine Power, which once upon a time, believe it or not, was a local company, rated one of the best-run utilities in the country.

But alas, as CMP has undergone a series of corporate acquisitions and reorganizations going back to 2008, it has come under increasingly remote ownership, and utility performance and customer satisfaction have deteriorated. CMP consistently ranks as one of the worst-performing utilities in the nation. At the same time, this monopoly’s guaranteed profits on the backs of ratepayers are exported far beyond Maine’s borders, rather than being sufficiently invested in modernizing our electric grid.

We would assume that, given this background, Maine regulators would take every opportunity to safeguard the needs and interests of Maine customers in any new corporate restructuring efforts.

In fact, the Legislature has given the PUC robust powers of oversight in this area, including changes in 2019 to require that deals like this be proven to have benefits to Maine people. Today, CMP’s corporate parents are required to get approval from Maine state regulators before they can move forward with the latest corporate restructuring plan.

The case now before the PUC involves a $2.5 billion buyout of the public shareholders on the New York Stock Exchange of Avangrid, the parent company of CMP and Maine Natural Gas. The deal would make the company entirely private, resulting in Iberdrola being the sole 100% owner of Avangrid and all its Maine subsidiaries.

Iberdrola is one of the largest energy companies in the world, a vast $80 billion conglomerate, based in Spain, owned in large parts by the governments of Qatar and Norway, with assets scattered all over the world. Maine represents a mere 2% of worldwide Iberdrola utility customers – a drop in its global bucket.

The deal would not only terminate all federal financial reporting requirements, essentially taking the company dark, but it would also eliminate the remaining 18.4% block of public shareholders who currently exercise the only check on Iberdrola’s otherwise unfettered authority.

One expert, Scott Hempling, a former administrative law judge at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, described in a filing in this case how minority shareholders impose discipline on corporate governance, reduce risk-taking and improve accountability.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be shocking that avoiding regulatory scrutiny is one of the primary reasons that Iberdrola is seeking to consolidate its power over Avangrid, according to internal corporate documents explaining the move (documents that would no longer be required if the deal goes through).

Recent audits of CMP and Avangrid ordered by the PUC have already raised concerns that the profit-focused management culture and the rapidly increasing size of Iberdrola have likely resulted in neglect of core utility operations and performance quality failures for Maine utilities.  The latest corporate reshuffle looks a lot like a continuation of this pattern.

Iberdrola, Avangrid and CMP are advocating a “just trust us” approach, trying to convince the PUC and Maine people they can be trusted to do the right thing. But we know from recent years – whether it is billing scandals, storm recovery, sending customers inaccurate information about disconnecting their service, or the unacceptable delays in bringing home-grown clean energy online – that these corporate giants can’t be trusted to do anything other than look after their own profit.

The Legislature and Maine people have been very clear on this point – our utilities need more aggressive accountability and oversight, not less. That’s why we’ve passed new laws to ensure our utilities are performing and modernizing with an eye to the future. Giving Iberdrola the green light for this merger – without fully understanding its impact on Maine people and businesses – would undermine that progress.