Senate Bill 269 - Does MJMEUC need to be audited by the state? Do birds need wings to fly?

The ink was barely dry on Senator 'Doc' Brown's (R) certificate of election when he filed a bill to require the Missouri State Auditor's office to audit MJMEUC-MoPEP (They call themselves "Mudge-Muck". Isn't that just too cute) every two years as other state agencies, counties and miscellaneous governmental units are audited by the state.

When you're running the only “joint municipal utility commission” in the state comprised of a consortium of 35 public municipalities which has racked up over $2 BILLION in debt in just five years by using the utility revenues of those little towns as collateral to invest in high-risk coal-fired power plants like Prairie State that irresponsibly and secretly doubled their construction costs from $2.4 billion to $5.5 billion, it's a little hard to make a convincing argument that you should be the only agency in the state exempt from all public accountability.

Senate Bill 269 will make sure “Mudge-Muck” and its minions and affiliates are audited every two years by the state auditor. The results of that audit will be reported to each of the member MoPEP towns as well as the state government to determine, “whether the member governments are legally obligated or have otherwise assumed the obligation to finance the deficits of, or provide financial support to, the joint commission; or whether the member governments are obligated for the debt of the joint commission and if so the extent of that current debt. The auditor shall report in detail the extent of the assets and liabilities of any investments or other business joint ventures of the joint municipal utility commission and report how it impacts the liens upon the assets of each municipality so that these joint venture liabilities and obligations may be correctly reflected in the annual audits of each municipal member of the joint municipal utility commission.”  This is information the board of MJMEUC has never provided to it's municipal members. It should be a shock to most of them when they see the first report.

SB269 is now in the Governmental Accountability Committee. You may keep track of its progress and read the summary or the whole bill in this link.

Naturally, Duncan Kincheloe, CEO of MJMEUC-MoPEP would prefer that his activities not be subjected to public scrutiny and most particularly not by the state auditor. MJMEUC was the first "Joint Municipal Utility Commission Act" in 2002 which is in RSMo Chapter 393 sections 393.700 through 393.770. As a consortium of unregulated municipal utilities (technically a "body public and corporate") Mudge-Muck has all the powers of a municipality - which is a great deal of power - including the power to tax and condemn land, but the statutes in RSMo 393 Kincheloe wrote with the help of his law firm Gilmore & Bell, contained none of the restraints or accountability of a municipality. Unlimited power is the objective of all dictators but it is an anathema to democratic government. The first step to reigning in MJMEUC’s unlimited power and making it accountable to the people is to provide for the state to audit their books.

AND MORE TRANSPARENCY.......In addition, in SB 269 there is also a provision requiring that there be an advertised public hearing and a public referencum vote before any third or fourth class city can participate in a joint municipal utility commission. There should be more than just a majority vote of a few guys on the city council on what someone claims is a "routine power contract" before they can sell their towns down the river to a consortium that will hold them in hock for a share of billions in debt.....literally forever.

It is hard to imagine how anyone in Jefferson City would vote against reigning in the kind of unbridled power Kincheloe and his cronies have created for themselves in an environment where the citizens and rate-payers are completely vulnerable and have no protection from the PSC but you can be sure there will be some. Keep an eye on your own Senator and Representative and see how they react to this legislation. 

What does Mudge-Muck have to do with SB50, the atomic plant financing scam? The Chief Mudge-Mucker Kincheloe is now heavily embroiled in the joint corporate effort to get SB50 passed which will allow all the utility companies including the rural co-ops and Duncan and his Mudge-Muckers to tax us in advance for the billions it takes for them to build atomic utility plants. We-the-People of Missouri flat turned this underhanded financing scheme down a couple of years ago in a statewide referendum but they've found a loophole and are pretending they’re only going to tax us to pay for their “permit” which just happens to be the same price as building their whole atomic plant.  

The privately-owned power companies and the electric co-ops have taken a page from Kincheloe’s book. Because the legitimate banks won’t fund high-risk atomic utility plants (or high-risk coal-fired power plants), that are a hell of a lot more high risk since the earth quakes in Japan blew up three atomic power plants, the power industry must turn the ignorant and unsuspecting public into their personal bankers to finance these toxic projects that the banking community won’t touch.  

Turning the public into your private bank is the same thing the Mudge-Muckers did when they created MoPEP and signed up little unregulated towns to be their collateral cows so they could issue revenue bonds and buy into coal-fired power plants no matter how much CO2 and other deadly toxins they emit.
If your project is so financially shaky that smart banking people won’t finance it what you do is change the laws so the public has to give you the money and they have to take all the risk. Now all they have to do is convince us their atomic plants are safe and their radioactive waste won’t spill out during earthquakes and contaminate us. That’s going to be much harder to do now than it was before March 11^th.