Letter sent to the Iowa Utilities Board by the City of Decorah decries Alliant Energy's conduct during the municipalization vote

When the Iowa Utility Board approved a rate increase for Alliant Energy, it also asked the utility to come up with a plan for how Alliant will act in future votes about a municipal electric utility.

Now the City of Decorah has filed comments with the IUB about that process with strong language about what is sees as the failure of Alliant to do what the Iowa Utilities Board requested.

The 9-page document says despite the IUB requiring that Alliant "put forth a specific plan to ensure that customers in municipalization efforts receive complete and accurate information," Alliant's plan does not address that in any way.  In fact, "Decorah is not even mentioned in the (Alliant) plan and the word 'municipalization' is used only once in the entire document.  Instead, Alliant continues to ignore the rate case evidence and does not address how it will ensure that its duplicitous behavior will not be repeated in the future in Decorah."

The City of Decorah's letter to the IUB says, "At the very least, they (the Iowa Utilities Board) should require Alliant Energy to submit any promotional material to the Board for review as to its accuracy before (the material) is released to Alliant customers and the voting public.  This is particularly true when communities are considering municipalization."

It continues by saying, "Even better would be for the IUB to adopt rules to govern the municipalization process that includes a discovery mechanism by which a municipality is able to gather information about claims being made by the utility prior to the municipalization vote."

The effort to approve steps toward forming a municipal electric utility in Decorah failed by three votes two years ago.  Supporters of having a municipal electric utility have said they're interested in holding a second vote on the issue after the four-year waiting period between such elections expires in 2022.