By Jim Baller
In October and November of 1906, when electrification was the must-have new technology of the era, Moody’s Magazine invited the leading advocates and opponents of municipal electric utilities to write chapters for a special issue. The opponents contributed the following chapters: “Municipal Ownership Costly and Dangerous,” “Municipal Ownership a Delusion,” “Municipal Ownership Uneconomic,” “Why Municipal Service is Expensive,” and “Municipal Ownership Always a Failure.”
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that everyone on of these claims was wrong.