Parkinson’s dirty deal, part 3

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Rural Electrification Administration in 1935, the vast majority of American farmers were still using kerosene lanterns and wood-burning stoves. Unlike their urban counterparts, rural residents had little access to electricity.

Under the REA, dozens of mom-and-pop, customer-owned companies brought power to the countryside. In 1957, six of those community cooperatives in Western Kansas banded together to create the entity that would become Sunflower Electric Power Corporation.

That quaint image has changed drastically in the past 50 years, though.

“Now, the coops are playing like the big boys,” says Scott Allegrucci, director of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy. “They’re serving hundreds of thousands of people.”

But, thanks to Gov. Mark Parkinson’s coal capitulation, they won’t be regulated like the big boys — no matter how big they get.