More News

Tomorrow night — Halloween — the governor's family hands out candy to Annapolis trick-or-treaters at Government House. There's no word on whether Gov. Martin O'Malley will join his kids and wife in this autumnal tradition.

Nor do we know if O'Malley is dressing up for the occasion. This year, it seems appropriate that he appear in a vampire costume, complete with bloody fangs and a Count Dracula mask.

Vlad the Impaler, the model for Bram Stoker's Dracula, would be a fitting disguise for the governor in light of his maddening quest to suck the life's blood out of Constellation Energy Group.

The governor has developed an unhealthy obsession with Constellation. He pounded at Constellation during his 2006 election campaign for daring to raise electric rates sharply after seven years of below-market prices for 1 million BGE customers in central Maryland.

Since then, O'Malley has tried again and again to undercut Constellation, mincing no words in harshly denouncing the company.

In March 2008, he reached a "bury the hatchet" accord in which Constellation made $2 billion worth of concessions, including a nearly $200 million rebate to BGE customers. O'Malley cooed warmly about Constellation's proposed $4.5 billion deal with French electric giant EDF and their joint plan to construct a new-generation nuclear plant at Calvert Cliffs — the largest construction project, by far, in Maryland history.

The peace pact didn't last long. O'Malley has been trying ever since to ram it to Constellation once again, pushing hard to block the EDF deal and re-regulate the state's power industry.

Over the summer, the governor tried to extort over half a billion dollars worth of concessions from Constellation as the price for building that Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in partnership with EDF. But Constellation finally recognized there would be no end to the concessions demanded by the governor. The discussions then concluded without any deal.

So now O'Malley is telling the Maryland Public Service Commission to act as his proxy.

This puts PSC commissioners in an uncomfortable and unfair position. All of them were appointed by O'Malley. They must stay on his good side to get reappointed. Yet what O'Malley wants would politicize the PSC and turn commissioners into mere puppets with the governor pulling the strings.

This would destroy the PSC's historic independence. It would make the commissioners look like flunkies for the Democratic governor.

There's great danger in the PSC following O'Malley's wishes. Little of what he wants has much to do with the Constellation-EDF deal and construction of the nation's first nuclear power plant in decades.

The governor seeks a giant political windfall: a 10 percent credit for BGE customers. This would let him tell voters next year that he fulfilled his campaign pledge to make Constellation give electric customers a break.

But if the PSC imposes O'Malley's onerous terms on Constellation, the company may well reject the offer.

That's the worst possible outcome. Here's what would be lost:

- A $129 million tax payment on the EDF transaction — enough to wipe out about half of this year's remaining budget deficit.

- A $22.5 million one-time credit for BGE customers.

- A $250 million investment in BGE.

- Delays in filing new rate requests for power.

- A $20 million environmental visitors center at Calvert Cliffs.

-A $36 million donation to Constellation's charitable foundation.

- A new corporate presence in Maryland — EDF's North American headquarters.

Worst of all, there would be no $9 billion nuclear plant built at Calvert Cliffs. Maryland would lose 4,000 construction jobs and 400 permanent positions. It would lose all that non-polluting electric power, enough to light 1.6 million homes and lower costs to BGE consumers.

Meanwhile, Maryland's energy future would become cloudy. Customers would have to live with brownouts down the road and get used to paying much higher rates to import needed electric power into the state.

Some of O'Malley's requests of Constellation are sensible, such as "ring-fencing" BGE from possible negative financial ramifications of such a costly construction project. The governor also wants BGE's finances strengthened. But all that already is contained in Constellation's proposal before the PSC.

"This transaction is at the ultimate fork in the road," Constellation wrote in its final PSC submission this week.

The PSC probably will kill the project if it acts as O'Malley's loyal henchman. But construction could move ahead if commissioners ignore the governor's unreasonable overreach and give their consent to slightly modified terms that are realistic and practical.

The choice lies in the hands of the commissioners.

It's clear that lots of positives flow from consummating the Constellation-EDF deal. It's also clear that embracing O'Malley's demands will be the kiss of death — a fitting Halloween "trick" that could set off a string of negative consequences even Vlad the Impaler might not relish.

Barry Rascovar is a longtime State House columnist and a Baltimore-area communications consultant. He can be reached at

brascovar@hotmail.com.