To the editor:

It’s true that public utility districts (PUDs) provide power and water to many areas in our state.

A PUD is only as good as the people who run them. Grant County PUD built two dams on the Columbia River along with distribution of irrigation water. Many people would question the wiseness of dam projects. One man went to the penitentiary for accepting kickbacks from the contractor who built one of the dams. The contractor didn’t go to jail but paid a million dollar fine.

The Association of Washington Public Utility Districts paid experts to do a study supporting the PUD claims that they could beat Puget Sound Energy (PSE) rates by 10 percent which the Jefferson County PUD relied upon when they took over PSE’s operations.

The same experts are telling Jefferson County PUD to double or even triple minimum monthly fixed “customer charge,” and to institute an across-the-board 10 percent rate hike.

So much for the “unenforceable promises and rhetoric” surrounding Bainbridge Island’s “Local Power.”

DICK KRUTCH

Bainbridge Island