Colstrip Chaos

NorthWestern Sows Colstrip Chaos at the Capitol

by Anne Hedges

NorthWestern Energy showed its true colors this session.

The monopoly energy company was not only aggressively hostile to clean energy, it was hell-bent on grossly overcharging customers for the Colstrip plant, regardless of whether the plant continues to operate.

Utilities are known for finding creative ways to enrich their shareholders, but NorthWestern’s efforts to gain its shareholders unbridled profit at the expense of its customers was a shock to even the most cynical observers. NorthWestern’s customers are fortunate that the most outrageous and expensive proposals didn’t pass the Legislature, but the company did succeed in convincing the Legislature to create significant roadblocks to clean energy, to enrich its shareholders at the expense of low-income Montanans, and to rewrite a private contract made decades before NorthWestern became involved in the Colstrip plant.

The most notable and unscrupulous bill was SB 379 (Sen. Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls). It was so alarming that criticism of it was swift, furious, and bipartisan. It’s unfathomable that NorthWestern thought it would be reasonable to force its customers to pay billions of dollars to purchase all of the Colstrip power plant, and to bear all of the financial risk, and to pay for all cleanup costs associated with the plant.

The five Republicans on the Public Service Commission (PSC) were some of the first to condemn the proposal, followed by the business community, consumer advocates such as AARP and the Montana Consumer Counsel, the medical community, and of course, thousands of NorthWestern’s customers who would be on the hook for billions of dollars.

SB 379 sailed through the Senate on a partyline vote but met overwhelming resistance in the House Energy Committee, where only one legislator voted in its favor. The overwhelming bipartisan vote against the bill helped deter Sen. Duane Ankney’s proposal to revive a portion of the bill by attaching it to an unrelated measure in the Senate. That subsequent bill, HB 695, sailed out of Sen. Ankney’s Senate Energy Committee but failed to get a vote by the full Senate.

But NorthWestern had other irons in the fire. Its lobbyists were busy convincing the Legislature to overturn the 1981 contract between the plant owners that has governed plant decisions since before the plant was built. NorthWestern succeeded in convincing most Republican legislators and Governor

Gianforte that the U.S. and Montana

Constitutions’ contract clauses are meaningless. The ownership contract governs most decision-making at the plant, including how disputes are resolved among the six owners and how voting occurs on maintenance and operations decisions. SB 265 and SB 266 (both Sen. Steve

Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls) tried to rewrite various provisions in the original contract to