May 30th, 2008

Quiet outrage at BCC hearing
By Clarence Fanto, Berkshire Eagle

Where’s the outrage? Well, it’s all around us as Americans come to realize that they are being duped and victimized by big oil with its unconscionable profits and by market speculators who drive up prices in frenzied futures trading, brought to you by the Bush administration’s deregulation and its devil-may-care attitude toward ordinary citizens.

Add to the mix certain retailers who jacked up prices at Berkshire gas pumps to as high as $4.09 a gallon over the Memorial Day weekend and then pulled them down below $4 once the work week resumed, and no wonder we’re all seeing red.

All this surfaced, politely of course, at Berkshire Community College on Wednesday as Sen. John Kerry, accompanied by state Attorney General Martha Coakley, conducted a two-hour “field hearing” of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, which he chairs. Looking as aristocratic and Presidential as ever, Kerry channeled the anger into a measured, deliberate onslaught against the villains in our midst who are accomplices of the petro-dictatorships that are strangling the Western world.

The stars of the show at BCC were Mayor John W. Barrett III of North Adams, a kinder, gentler, mellower champion of the little guy whom Kerry praised as “an absolute warrior a one-man gas-price monitor,” and a timid yet eloquent Advertisement small-business owner from his city, Colleen Taylor Reinhard. Supporting-cast members who contributed valuable insights included a top executive from National Grid; the head of a small alternative-energy startup business, SunEthanol in Hadley; the state’s energy undersecretary, and Berkshire County Chamber of Commerce chief Michael Supranowicz, who bemoaned the refusal of electricity suppliers to negotiate a favorable rate for a consortium of 50-plus local companies that he recently formed.

In his introductory remarks for the first U.S. Senate committee hearing ever held here, Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto cited reports indicating Berkshire energy costs are 37 percent above the national average — Massachusetts and its New England neighbors rank as the most expensive states in the nation. He also mentioned companies that have closed, cut back or canceled plans to locate in the county because of over-the-top electricity and fuel prices — notably the Canadian water-bottler Ice River Springs Water Co., which invested $5 million into a facility on West Housatonic Street in Pittsfield only to cancel its plans and site its new plant in Claremont, N.H., where electricity costs are much lower. Ice River could have created up to 250 new jobs here, according to Ruberto.

Kerry, ever the patrician but with barely-contained fury, mentioned nearby districts that have been forced to cut academic programs in order to fuel school buses, and explained how 10 percent of the Colonial Theatre’s monthly budget is “sucked right down the drain” to pay the energy piper. The Massachusetts Democrat is on the warpath, promising an effort to galvanize Congress to authorize a Justice Department task-force investigation into potential market manipulation, corporate corruption and outright fraud.

He warned that there’s no “silver-bullet solution” but took Republican senators to task for blocking a windfall-profits tax approved by the House as part of a broader energy bill. The only bright spot Kerry found was a growing awareness that the country must transition to alternative fuel supplies, as slow and painful as that may be. “There’s a new future staring us in the face, folks,” he declared.

Barrett, who has successfully dueled with the Time Warner cable behemoth, listed inexplicable price differentials at gas stations in the region, even in the same city or town, and he accused some of them of outright gouging. “It does not get more blatant than this,” he fumed. While Barrett had some brief success in leveling North Adams pump prices after he threatened to involve the state attorney general a few weeks ago, he acknowledged that the gas-station owners soon caught on and realized that the state’s longest-serving mayor, 25 years on the job, had no actual clout.

“People are scared,” he testified, and they lack confidence in President Bush’s leadership since he’s totally out to lunch on gas prices. Citing historical precedent, Barrett came close to recommending that the government threaten to impose formal controls on the big oil companies. That could work wonders, as President Truman found out when he confronted the railroads and President Kennedy learned when he took on U.S. Steel.

Colleen Taylor Reinhard’s two North Adams restaurants (the popular, “Cheers”-style Freight Yard Pub and the new, upscale Taylor’s Fine Dining) are struggling to stem losses triggered by a 27 percent increase in the cost of energy, food (wheat flour up 50 percent since January, eggs up 50 percent in the past year, chicken up nearly 10 percent so far this year) and credit-card fees (up 14 percent). Loaded down by debt and behind on bills, Reinhard and some of her fellow restaurateurs face a bleak winter following the usual summer surge, and she hinted darkly that layoffs are likely, and that one of her eateries may not survive.

America is starting to go “green,” but cutting the umbilical cord to oil will take decades. For the short haul, Kerry discouraged the notion of a “quick-hit” government solution, noting, “the fastest, cheapest, most effective grab is energy-efficiency.” That means massive lifestyle changes — now happening in western Europe, where gas prices are as high as $12 per gallon.

It’s difficult to do much driving at exorbitant prices, except perhaps to drive Republicans out of the White House in November.

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