Separate Politics, Power

Our View: Gov. O'malley Looks Like He's Shaking Down Constellation Energy

Constellation Energy Group is a hard company to feel much sympathy for, but Gov. Martin O'Malley seems to be doing his level best to make it easier.

His appointees on the Public Service Commission ruled this week that they have the right to approve or quash Constellation's deal to sell almost half of its nuclear business to Electricit? de France on the grounds that EDF could have the potential to indirectly influence the Constellation subsidiary Baltimore Gas & Electric Co. Constellation claims an agreement Mr. O'Malley and the General Assembly struck with the company in 2008 gives it the right to enter a deal like the one with EDF with no regulatory oversight by the PSC. Constellation has sued, and time will tell whether the court agrees.

The public certainly has an interest in making sure the deal won't adversely affect BGE ratepayers. But the O'Malley administration seems interested in something else entirely - using the EDF deal as an excuse to shake Constellation down for more cash. Witness the contradiction: Mr. O'Malley is saying on one hand that he believes the EDF deal may well be a good thing for the state, but on the other that he'll happily make this regulatory business go away if Constellation agrees to a new settlement worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

If the deal is good, what's to settle? Mr. O'Malley's previous agreement with the company came seven years after the state deregulated electricity and after the flaws of that policy had become apparent. This time, he's trying to score some cash in exchange for avoiding any public evaluation of the deal. That sounds like extortion.

Constellation has plenty to answer for. The possibility that CEO Mayo A. Shattuck III could eventually get an $87 million severance package is, as Mr. O'Malley points out, outrageous.

But it also has nothing to do with the matter at hand. The fact that the governor keeps bringing it up makes it harder to believe that he's trying to get a square deal from the state's largest utility and easier to conclude that he's obsessed with erasing the political stain caused by his failure to stop the 72 percent electric rate increase he pledged to reverse in his 2006 campaign. Marylanders need a leader who will negotiate fairly on their behalf to secure reliable, affordable, clean energy, and politicizing the issue isn't the way to do it.