OPINION: Private equity and critical utilities don't mix

Private ownership of inherently monopolistic entities whose only goal is profit is a terrible model. A public necessity (like electricity) should not be run by a private company that cares only about squeezing every last penny out of customers. Citizens' needs are simply not relevant no matter what company officials claim.

Free market competition is impractical because you can't have multiple companies each running their own power lines. A private company must be heavily regulated to limit its greed. But even better would be to not have necessary infrastructure private in the first place. Critical utilities (which should now include internet) and life-and-death services should not be privately owned. The proper metric for this kind of company is quality of service, not profit. Remember that some of the wildfires that devastated California recently were in large part due to private electric companies cutting expenses to maximize profit.

Profit-motivated monopolies that own life-saving products can raise prices based on profit considerations. The life-saving EpiPen is the poster child of the problem. A company took over the distribution rights for a device that delivered a $1 dose of a drug with a device manufacturing cost of $10. The company increased the price to over $600. People die when this happens but private companies don't care.

The same thing happened with insulin. And for diabetics, if they can't afford insulin after a company raises the price, they die. This is what companies that have a monopoly do when selling critical products because their decisions are based exclusively on maximizing their profit.

There is a proposal before the Public Regulation Commission to approve the sale of TXNM Energy, the parent company of Public Service Company of New Mexico, to Blackstone Infrastructure, a faceless out-of-state corporation. Blackstone’s track record for this sort of thing in other communities is abysmal. The fig leaf of colorful slides and glossy brochures can't hide the damage Blackstone has done with similar purchases elsewhere. This sale would be a travesty and a huge leap in the wrong direction. You would be taking a bad model (private ownership) and making it much worse (private out-of-state ownership). At the very least, a guaranteed rate of return of nearly 10% is outrageous and that should be eliminated.

And if you care about quality service for less cost to the consumer, you should be considering making PNM a transparent publicly owned utility instead of an opaque corporation.

For a deeper background on this sort of thing, please read Dennis Kucinich's excellent book "Division of Light and Power" about his experience as mayor fighting to keep Cleveland's electric utility publicly owned with far lower rates than if the power company were privatized.

Paul Kinzelman is a retired computer engineer who lives in Peralta. He is concerned about the sale of Public Service Company of New Mexic.