Higher costs. Poor service. Mismanagement of ratepayer funds. This was not what homeowners and other ratepayers were promised.

When Jefferson County voters decided to move electrical service from their reliable, private, regulated utility to a public utility district, County officials promised them a range of benefits. Voters were told rates would be kept stable and were promised “the possibility of rate cuts.” Voters were told a public entity would be more responsive to customer needs.

It hasn’t worked out like that. As Bainbridge residents think about switching from a regulated private utility to a public entity, there are important lessons to learn from their neighbor’s mistakes.

Right out of the gate, Jefferson County utility commissioners, eager to believe the transition to a public utility would be successful, accepted exceedingly rosy financial projections. The consultant they hired claimed buying the electric system from Puget Sound Energy would cost an estimated $47 million. It actually cost more than twice that amount, about $111 million. Ironically, the same consultant has now been hired by Bainbridge.

This was not simply an error. The commissioners received other, more accurate, cost estimates, but they chose to ignore them. The desire of public officials to believe that everything would be better once they took over, blinded them to the warning signs.

As a result, rather than cutting rates, county officials increased rates. For virtually the entire time since Jefferson County Public Utility District took over, electricity rates have been higher they would have been if residents had stayed with Puget Sound Energy.

Again, politics worked against ratepayers. Commissioners, rather than find ways to cut costs, simply told people, “We’re trying to get away from comparing ourselves to PSE.” Instead of admitting the problem, and pay a political price, Commissioners tried to wish the unfavorable comparison away.

The high acquisition cost contributed to poor customer service. With more debt than planned, the utility district was on a knife’s edge financially. Officials tightened rules regarding payment deadlines and became more aggressive about cutting off customers for late payment. When customers asked why the new approach was more aggressive than PSE’s, one Commissioner responded, “Puget Sound Energy is gone, what they did doesn’t matter.”

Worse, as a public entity, the utility could no longer contribute to a non-profit charity program to help pay energy bills of low-income families. Instead of the $464,000 given annually by PSE, the utility’s charity effort raised an average of only $42,000 in the first three years.

It would be easy to blame the results in Jefferson County on mismanagement, bad luck or the poor judgment. Bainbridge commissioners may argue they can avoid those mistakes.  Those excuses miss the point.

The real causes of the problems were the political incentives of Commissioners to believe data that fit their political biases and to hide politically embarrassing problems. Bainbridge officials may not make the same mistakes. Political incentives, however, will cause them to make different, but equally costly, mistakes.

When problems crop up, elected officials are unlikely to admit error. More likely, they will blame others and claim the problems are not that bad. While public utility advocates claim local control will be more responsive, the history in Jefferson County, and of politicians everywhere, is that they deflect blame when problems crop up. Politicians do not want to pay the price for their errors, but those costs must be paid, and they will fall hard on homeowners and other ratepayers.

Bainbridge voters should think twice about replacing a regulated, private utility with a public utility. The lessons of the failed Jefferson County transition are a warning that political promises of lower rates and better service are unlikely to come true, because they are subject to real world finances and political incentives.