Rate relief a reasonable outcome

State legislative leaders are nearing agreement on one of the more contentious issues of a contentious session: electric rates for homeowners.

In general, the deal calls for ComEd and Ameren to offer rate relief of about $1 billion over four years. That means the average ComEd customer will end up paying about 13 percent higher rates this year than he or she did last year. Without this relief, the increase would have been almost double that amount. ComEd customers will receive their relief in the form of a lump-sum credit.

Legislators still need to iron out final details, but House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President Emil Jones felt confident enough to take a victory lap on Monday, stopping at five cities in downstate Illinois, where the highest rate increases rocked consumers.

Madigan and Jones have clashed for months, with Madigan pushing to extend a decade-old rate freeze and Jones opposing any freeze extension. On this point, Jones had the stronger argument. The eventual outcome -- rate relief -- is preferable to a further extended freeze because it assists consumers while avoiding the inevitable eventual consequences of indefinitely freezing rates at levels that have no bearing on how much it costs to generate and deliver electricity.

While Madigan will not get the freeze he favored, he and his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, joined Jones in Monday's fly-around because they, too, have something to tout beyond the billion-dollar rate relief.

The Madigans are playing up a part of the legislative deal that they strongly favor: creation of an entity called the Illinois Power Agency. This agency would negotiate with electricity producers to gain what, presumably, will be relatively favorable rates for consumers. The attorney general characterizes the agency and its negotiations as a big improvement over the power auction that at one point won the approval of legislators and the Illinois Commerce Commission only to produce, its first time out, rates deemed unacceptably high.

The concept of the power agency is too new, with too few details available, to judge in any kind of detail. The creation of yet another new agency in a state that has way too many levels of government is hardly inspiring, but that can be overlooked in the long run if the agency uses the principle of large-volume buying to ensure residents reliable electric supplies at reasonable rates.

But the agency's creation also signals that the state's interest in deregulation has cooled. Is that a negative? Maybe, maybe not. A few other states have reported greater success than Illinois in introducing competition and tying rates to market forces. Legislators could have tried harder to improve the path to regulation. But maybe the new agency will bring rate stability that will be valuable in its own right.