Tommy Denton

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On Sunday's Opinion page, editorial cartoonist Jim McCloskey set a nocturnal scene on a shadowy corner bathed in the dim light of a street lamp.

The cartoon characterized the Virginia General Assembly as a most provocatively attired young woman. She clutched a wad of currency in one hand and joined the other in the grip of a trench-coated character labeled "Dominion Power." The accommodating lady in pink boa and net stockings said, "I know what this must look like."

Well, yes. Sometimes things look the way they are because they are the way they are.

Dominion Power provides electricity to two-thirds of the state, including Hampton Roads, Northern Virginia and Richmond. Largely at the demand and political enticement of Dominion, Virginia has been haltingly "restructuring" electricity service since 1999 toward a fully deregulated market by 2011.

Yet a gathering political storm in other parts of the country reflects considerable disillusionment with the siren song of electricity deregulation. Recognizing a brewing storm of retribution from an angry, betrayed public, Dominion would prefer that state lawmakers settle any policy course corrections in the corporation's favor. Thus the current overtures to the General Assembly.

As long ago as 1996 the State Corporation Commission, which regulates the electricity industry among others, issued cautionary warnings to beware prophecies too good to be true. A few prudent legislative voices, like that of former Del. Chip Woodrum of Roanoke, also have urged caution, but those voices echoed in the distance like faint neon hums amidst the pep rallies of the free marketeers.

Things just haven't worked out. Golden promises of radically reduced consumer prices under market competition have proved to be horribly wrong. Other jurisdictions in the United States have found the magic lamp of full deregulation to be filled with the toxic fumes of exploding utility bills rather than a benevolent genie.

A decade after the initial promises -- a period including the collapse of California's electricity market, Enron's larcenous excesses through market manipulation and other unpleasantness -- hard experience has finally convinced most reasonable advocates of deregulation that, well, things aren't working out.

Then came Dominion for the 2007 session of the General Assembly with an exit strategy, proposing to return to sort-of regulation under the SCC, except that Dominion would enjoy the sky as the limit for its corporate profits. Which does not exactly fit the classic definition of "publicly regulated monopoly," but it was good enough for longtime deregulation advocate Sen. Thomas Norment Jr., R-James City County, to introduce a legislative remedy that differed only incidentally from the draft prepared by Dominion.

Norment, by the way, is chairman of the 10-member Commission on Electric Utility Deregulation. The commission could determine the success of Dominion's effort to unburden its executives and stockholders of regulatory rigors that might compromise their vision of untrammeled profitability.

Rather than entrust ratemaking oversight to the agency that has decades of experience in such endeavors, Norment instead proposes in Senate Bill 1416 to create a complex formula by which Dominion would maintain its monopoly and obtain protection from intrusive meddling with its bottom line.

Already, under the restructuring provisions that replaced full state regulation, Dominion over the last five years realized earnings that were more than $858 million higher than they would have been under SCC supervision, according to a report last year by the state attorney general's office.

As a gesture of its good will toward Virginia's public servants, Dominion has presented nearly $3.8 million in campaign contributions and gifts to state politicians in the last decade, according to a report in The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.

Norment received $35,551 in donations from Dominion, almost as generous a vote of confidence as that given to Sen. Kenneth Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, also a member of the deregulation commission and recipient of $37,947 in cash contributions and more than $1,800 in gifts.

Norment, when asked about the generous contributions from Dominion, replied that any suggestion the corporation could buy his vote "is a gross affront to me." He didn't, after all, copy Dominion's draft legislation verbatim.

Even so, Virginians may be forgiven for seeing more than mere humor in McCloskey's coquettish cartoon figure: "I know what this must look like."

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.