Contact delegation about electric bill concerns
Letter to the Editor:
My compliments to Phyllis Mains of Van Wert, long-time advocate for the Sierra Club, for her May 20, 2009, letter to the editor and taking time to become informed about climate legislation Congress is considering. It would be terrific if more U.S. citizens took as much interest in important issues as she does.
My perspective differs from Ms. Main’s viewpoint on the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, but I suspect that she and I, along with many others, would agree that unaffordable electric bills would be harmful to Clarke Electric Cooperative member owners. The average American’s electric bill would increase more than $100 every single month, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan tax education organization in Washington, D.C., if Congress passed the climate legislation it is considering. This will be an unfair burden on the lower income consumers that use more of their income to pay utility bills.
As the manager and a member of Clarke Electric Cooperative, I have been asking the people to whom we provide electricity, to contact Iowa’s congressional delegation at www.ourenergy.coop to express concerns about keeping electric bills affordable. According to her letter to the editor published in this newspaper, Ms. Mains’ opinion is that I shouldn’t do that. In a representative democracy like ours, the people we elect need to know what we think and how we feel in order to do their job representing us.
Again, Ms. mains, thank you for sharing your opinion. It’s wonderful that we live in a country that protects its citizens’ freedoms, including the freedom to express ourselves and share our viewpoint with the people we elect to represent us.
Bill Freeman, General Manager, Clarke Electric Cooperative
