ALBERT LEA, Minn.- Energy customers in a Southern Minnesota are ready to say no to a rate hike.
Interstate Power and Light, an Alliant Energy company is proposing a 22 percent increase for customers in Southern Minnesota.
In the past, when the Minnesota Chamber Of Commerce intervenes in energy rate hikes like the one proposed in Albert Lea, they have been very successful.
Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson is now involved. She's calling the increase "rate shock."
Now they're hoping the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will agree.
Albert Lea city and economic leaders are fighting a proposed increase they feel they shouldn't have to pay.
"The City Of Albert Lea is not opposed to legitimate increases, but Minnesota rate payers should not have to pay for the bad business decisions of IPL," said Mayor Vern Rasmussen.
"I think of the several projects in the past year that we've worked on, one specifically came down to electricity rates, and even with our old rate that ended up going to another state, we certainly don't want to make that any worse," said Albert Lea Economic Development Director Dan Dorman.
They're hoping to rally home and business owners to voice concerns to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission about how the 22 percent hike will impact them.
"Certainly will impact the price of our product, it's already hard to compete with foreign imports, it would make it that much more difficult, to compete with them, keep our price down," said John Harrington.
He’s the facilities director at Bridon Cordige.
“My wife, it was up to her we had to turn the furnace down, we turned it down to 64, cause we couldn't afford to pay anymore, we had to get it down there, if they're gonna raise it, it's gonna break me," said Albert Lea resident Paul Schmidt.
Alliant Energy Manager Of Customer Communications Scott Drzycimski says the company hasn't increased rates in Southern Minnesota in five years, in part because the hikes are difficult on customers.
He says this increase is needed to keep up with emission and clean energy standards. They are also trying to recover from recent natural disasters.
"We've been hit by the economy, we've cut back we've tried to reduce our costs as much as possible in order to save our customers money, but in the end it's not good for the economic development of albert lea if the lines are falling off the poles and we can't keep the power on," he said.
Right now Alliant’s Minnesota customers are paying an interim increase of 21 percent. That went into effect in June.
If approved the hike will increase the company's annual revenues by $15 million.
The hearing on interstate power and light's proposed 22 percent increase is scheduled for this Thursday night at 7:00pm at Riverland Community College.
Alliant Energy customers are encouraged to attend.
