RottenReporting: Smearing Danville Utilities

Technically, this is RottenEditorialWriting but that’s just too long and stupid looking.

Danville Utilities has done a good job getting rid of the problems that they had with employee corruption, but that doesn’t stop the editorial board of the Danville Register & Bee from attacking them with reckless rhetoric.

Let’s get started with the link to the lousy editorial. (Register & Bee link, paywall may apply unless you break through it.)

Have issues at Danville utility really been fixed?

I’m obliged to note that the company’s name is “Danville Utilities”. They sell more than one utility service. Anyway, let’s move along and look at some of the crap in the editorial.

The 19-month probe eventually resulted in criminal charges against six DP&L employees. What we don’t know, though, is exactly what went wrong at Danville Power & Light that caused the problems in the first place.

Yes. Yes, we do. There were crooked employees who realized that their management was not doing their supervisory jobs. Those employees quickly devised plans to inflate overtime hours and steal things from the job sites. They got bolder and bolder until they finally got busted.

This year’s electric rate increase, which comes during a city council election, won’t help the four incumbents on May’s ballot.

It’s a 1.5% increase and there’s no guarantee that it will be enacted. If the Register & Bee had written an in-depth article about how far that the electric fund is in the hole like SouthsideCentral did recently (or maybe the editorial board would have read our article), they just might be able to explain to the readers that the fund is Ten Friggin Million dollars in debt and has been over Nineteen Friggin Million Dollars in the hole. That money has to come from somewhere at sometime. That’s an inconvenient truth that the R&B’s editorial board just passes right over (and has passed over often in the past).

We’d like to think these reforms will go a long way toward ensuring that this type of petty corruption will never happen again, but it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Well, no duh on that one. The newly implemented controls will go a long way in stopping these types of problems from happening again. There’s no “like to think” about it, and saying “like to think” only breeds stupid thoughts in stupid people who don’t want to think for themselves. As for “it shouldn’t have happened in the first place” again that’s a plateful of No Duh. Nobody should commit any kinds of crimes “in the first place”. Crap happens, editorial board. You’re never going to be perfect at hiring, no matter how hard you try. Quit kicking them for things they’ve made efforts to resolve. What are you, their ex-wife?

Danvillians want to take Larking and others at their word that the problems at the power company have been fixed — mostly because they have no other choice.

This closing line of the editorial sounds great but is a giant NothingBurger once you look at it.

Danvillians also want to take the grocery store’s word that the hamburger they sell is actually hamburger. Danvillians want to take the gas station’s word that the unleaded plus fuel won’t blow up their cars when their leave the parking lot. Hell, that stupid sentence could be applied to almost every service or item that we buy.

The Register & Bee editorial board hasn’t sat in on a Danville Utility Commission meeting nor have they understood about the giant deficit in the electric fund balance. This editorial failed to mention that recent electric rate increases have come because the Utility Commission took bad advice from rate consultants and failed to make small incremental rate hikes when needed. Everything mentioned here is important factors in what makes Danville Utilities operate. Danville Utilities’ management has always been glad to help me explain things to my readers.

Smearing Danville Utilities for the sins of a few bad employees in the past is just wrong. It’s more wrong once the investigation has been closed and six employees were convicted of criminal charges (plus one employee who killed himself before he could be charged). Saying “Well, we have to trust them this time again, huh?” is just irresponsible. That’s just not fair when writing an editorial.

That’s RottenReporting.