December 4, 2009
Edward S. Finley
North Carolina Utilities Commission
4325 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-9816
re: Open Letter on my blog to State Utilities Commission Chairman Edward Finley, Attorney General of NC, and others.
Dear Sir,
This is an open letter to you, members of the Commission and others in North Carolina and around the world who read my blog. I believe the action of government in it's treatment of the average citizen (even those totally disabled, who gave their eyes for your country, or those who do not have the ability to write a letter) is indicative of the reason our once great nation is on the slow, but sure, chasm to insignificance. From 1535 to the present, when African slaves were first brought to Portugal, when the Church of England broke away from the Catholic Church, there has been an eclipse of morality in government. Europe is gone.
For nearly 50 years, as a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean Conflict, I have tried to live a productive life. I challenge you to find any man, anywhere, who has been more productive in acquiring wealth and paying taxes and still, until the age of 80, works everyday, takes care of himself totally, and is still subjected to the harassment perpetuated by government bureaucracy. For several months now I have tried to get electric service restored at just one office unit in one office building. I had a landlord agreement for years and have paid thousands of dollars to keep service connected to many buildings. Without notice, simply because I had a dispute over an incorrect reading of the meter (the readings, payments, etc., should have been studied by your office so they can see the inconsistency with one month), the service has not been reinstated.
Even though, because of my conversations with your employee, Mrs. Debnam, I agreed to pay the disputed amount and she told me that she would have Progress Energy send me a print out of all payments to this one property for the perusal of my lawyer and accountant, I heard nothing from your office (I sent you copies of 3 messages to Mrs. Debnam), nor have I heard anything from Progress Energy except that they doubled my rates on other buildings.
Because I wrote to the Chairman of the Legislation Committee and others, Mrs. Debman finally decided to contact me and I finally got a chance to talk with 3 people (they kept passing me from one person to another, each time asking for the same information as evidently they do not own computers where information is stored and shared) until finally Bernice took an application as if I had not done business with you for the past 60 years, and supposedly the service is to be reconnected.
My question is this, “Is this the way a MONOPOLY business should treat people, any citizen, whether disabled, poor, uneducated, whatever?”
Some years ago, I owned a large building in downtown Wilmington (15 S. Front Street) with an adjacent empty lot where another building had burned in 1945. The old water meter had never been removed for the burned building. A new meter reader read the meter for the burned building right next to my rented building and I was told by Mary Gornto, City Manager at the time, that if I did not pay the ludicrous water charges for this burned building she would have the water disconnected for all my property. all over the city. Since I always furnish all water to keep from having it terminated at the change of a tenant, this would have been a disaster. So, I paid the ridiculous amount. Again, an empty building, the water bill was $1,200 (Park Ave).
They finally told me I could pay half the amount but an employee of the water company called me herself. Without giving her name, these are her exact words, “Dr. Morris, I have heard you on radio talk shows for years, I know you are an honorable man. Only 3 gallons of water went through your meter but they will never admit a mistake, a wrong meter reading”. Twice in the past 20 years CP&L, now Progress Energy, made a mistake on my property. Once, disconnecting a paid account on the day of my mother's funeral. The house was next door to Henry Belk, editor of the Goldsboro News Argus. He wrote a stinging editorial about the mistake. Again, all the food in a freezer on Bermuda Dr, Wrightsville Beach, spoiled.
The mouse is much tastier after the cat teases him for awhile. The bureaucrats and those who run monopoly businesses enjoy, I do believe because they have no morals at all, pestering the public since it is within their power to do so. Bureaucrats, like the farmer about to butcher his cow, do not care what the cow thinks of him. If the Utilities Commission, if any other regulatory, oversight agencies of government, has any mission at all, it is to be the “watchman on the wall” of these unconcerned, shameless, monopoly bureaucrats largely controlling the lives of the public.
I am too old to fight many battles anymore as someone else must do this typing for me, must run around for me to check on things. I speak for the disenfranchised, the disabled (I have never yet found a bureaucrat or a business person who has read the ADA law).
Thank you for your help,
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