By Benjamin Yount    Illinois Statehouse News

SPRINGFIELD  –  Two years removed from Illinois’ “power wars” there is once again growing anger toward downstate’s largest utility.

Consumer groups and lawmakers are lining up at the statehouse in Springfield to oppose Ameren’s latest rate hike request.

 The electricity giant has asked the Illinois Commerce Commission for a $130 million increase to cover the cost of infrastructure upgrades and power delivery.

Ameren’s Leigh Morris said the utility needs to keep up with power lines and a delivery system that stretches from Galesburg to the southern tip of the state.

“We are a delivery system like UPS, and FedEx. The only way we make money is through delivery charges. We just charge to deliver like UPS does,” he said.

Morris said Ameren is very aware of what a rate hike would mean for customers, and is keeping that in mind.

“We want to assure everyone that we are doing everything we can to keep expenditures low,” Morris said.

But State Rep. John Bradley, D-Marion, said Ameren is making millions of dollars.  He said the company doesn’t need to ask customers to pay more.

“A company that made tens of millions of dollars in a very troubled economy now has come back, and despite huge profits, wants more money from Illinois consumers.  [The same] consumers who are struggling to pay for expenses, struggling to make ends meet, struggling to keep their jobs, that are looking for new jobs because of layoffs, are now being asked to pay more from a company that is making tens of millions of dollars from them.”

Bradley said if the ICC approves Ameren’s request, the utility will have received more in rate increases in the past few years than it paid into the $1 billion settlement with the state in 2007.

“In large part, I think it’s been a regulatory problem because the Commerce Commission has the opportunity to stop these things.  They could just say ‘no.’  But in the past they’ve given [Ameren] what they’ve wanted, or even more.”

State Sen. Dan Rutherford, R-Chenoa, isn’t as quick to blame the ICC.  He said lawmakers and advocates need to let the Commerce Commission decide, and then react.

“I don’t want my rates, my Mom’s rates, my neighbor’s rates to go up any more either.  But we have put into place a process called the Commerce Commission so that we are able to have an objective procedure in place to determine if there should be a rate increase or not.”

Rutherford said lawmakers need to take “politics” out of the process.

But Nancy Funk from AARP said politics, and more specifically political pressure, may be the only hope of stopping Ameren’s request.

Funk lead a group of senior citizens to the Capitol on Tuesday to talk about the rate hike.  She said another $130 million, or even another $50 million, for Ameren would  not be the end of the increase.

“We are going through this every year.  The CEO from Ameren made his brags down in Florida…that they’d be coming before the commission for the ‘foreseeable future.’  Now that’s in spite of a doubling of their profits.”

An administrative judge at the ICC has suggested cutting Ameren’s request from $130 million to $56 million.  But both Funk and Bradley said the commissioners do not have to listen to that recommendation.  A final hearing on the increase is set for later this spring.