Will rate hikes leave ComEd asking, 'who turned out the lights?'

Now that the summer news cycle has ended with such vital stories as a vanishing bank robber; a filthy-rich football player crashing his rich-man's ride into a pole and then hiding like a 2-year-old; and an avowed heterosexual senator playing tiddly-toe with an undercover cop in an airport bathroom; we can move on to less weighty matters.

How about your electric bill?

Happy with it?

Did you have to select either paying for lights or lunch? Or was it the window fan vs. the doctor's bill?

Those were not choices that had to be made by John Rowe, the Chairman and CEO of Exelon Corp, which owns and operates ComEd -- purveyors of your power.

Mr. Rowe is paid $7,898.

Per hour.

That works out to $63,184.

Per day.

ComEd's president Frank Clark doesn't have to worry about a lights vs. lunch either. Clark is the neighborly guy in the TV commercial walking through on a middle class sidewalk who makes $4 million a year to send out repair crews when your power sizzles out.

But enough about the struggles of ComExelon as I'll call it, just to save power on my laptop.

The Utility Workers Union has submitted a proposal to the Exelon board that would allow shareholders to approve what the union calls "excessive compensation." It will be taken up at next year's board meeting.

Until then, ComExelon will have to make ends meet because the governor finally signed an electric rate rebate package last week in a ceremony at the Du Quoin Illinois State Fair … appropriately, within whiff range of the hog display.

The law requires ComExelon to return $800 million in so-called rate relief to consumers. Mr. Rowe, who had previously forecast bankruptcy and a permanent blackout, now says the final settlement is only "painfully costly."

That is how Rowe described it at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 25. At that hour on that day Messrs Rowe and Clark were on the phone with investment analysts. Big publicly held firms put their executives on conference calls a few times a year to talk with analysts about company earnings. The analysts then decide whether to recommend the stock.

"The big news today is that we believe that we have reached an agreement with the Illinois Crisis," Rowe told analysts. "It comes after two years of defending Exelon and ComEd before the Illinois Commerce Commission, the courts and the legislature. It's painfully costly but it protects all of the vital interests of the company, its shareholders and its customers."

Notice the order in which Mr. Rowe puts those "vital interests." Company, then shareholders, then customers.

You can learn a lot about people by how they talk when they don't think you're listening. Rowe's phone call wasn't a town meeting with customers.

During the call, which usually escapes the attention of the public, Mr. Rowe speaks executivese … not the language of a public utility, but rather the dialect of a corporation whose first commitment is to shareholders.

"We have fought long and hard for over two years, pouring tens of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours in defending both ComEd and Exelon Generation," stated Rowe. And who do you think will end up paying all those legal bills and private jet trips to Springfield?

Mr. Rowe later admitted that "ComEd plans to file another distribution rate case with the ICC during the third quarter."

Rowe tipped his hand to the company's next rate-increase strategy. It won't be "another 25 percent increase at one time in Northern Illinois," stated Rowe. "If the system evolves into a slower, more ratcheted set of increases, I think our structures will prove relatively secure."

That is executivese for a slow, steady, drip-drip-drip of rate increases the next four years … increases that are permissible under the law signed by Gov. Blagojevich last week -- a fact that has also escaped attention.

"We have defended our value -- your value -- successfully from a set of attacks in Illinois of particular vehemence and persistence," said Mr. Rowe. "I expect we shall see new attacks in the future; not in Illinois for the next few years, but collaterally in Washington or perhaps Pennsylvania. We shall be as zealous in defending our market value in the future, when such attacks occur."

If you think that ComExelon is looking out first for electric consumers, think again. "There is the old song, 'This city was built on rock and roll,' " Rowe told analysts during that phone call. "This company is built on value for shareholders. There simply isn't anything that we will not look at with care, trying to assess both its short-term and its long-term value for shareholders.

"I think if you look at this deal and first figure out what percentage of the rate increases over, say, five years we've arranged to bring home, I think you'll feel that's a pretty satisfactory number," he said.

Finally, the bottom line from Mr. Rowe.

"I continue to commit to you that, as we look at the options -- what we can add to this company, what we might separate from this company -- we will do it in the same 'Where is the money' attitude which we have always done it."

With that, the phone call was over and Mr. Rowe could collect his money: $7,898 for the hour's work.