Writing in Utility Dive, Marc Brown of the Consumer Energy Alliance argues that state governments have been using electricity bills as a de facto tax. Programs that serve broad public purposes are bundled into monthly charges, making them easy to overlook and hard to challenge.
Brown contends that this practice is regressive, because the charges fall on all ratepayers regardless of income, and opaque, because consumers rarely see the breakdown of what they are paying for. He calls for financing these programs through state general funds instead, where elected officials would have to weigh them against other spending priorities in the open.
The piece is an opinion column, so it represents one industry perspective rather than a consensus view. No opposing arguments or data are presented in the source. If adopted, the proposal would shift the funding burden from electricity customers to all state taxpayers.