OCR Text |
Show LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 1. In order to offset the need for increased bus rates, repeated demands have been made to our Utah Public Service Commission that they force the National City Lines of Chicago to refund to their subsidiary here, the Salt Lake City Lines, the unconscionable, unconscion-able, illegal dividends (over and above that which they were entitled en-titled to), and which our PSC allowed to be drained from reserves re-serves of the local bus firm here since 1946. Details of these ex-horbitant ex-horbitant yearly dividends have already been published in former for-mer statements by the writer, amounting some years to as much as 40 and 50 per cent in dividends, and as high as $90,-000.00 $90,-000.00 in yearly service fees, whereas a monopoly protected utility is rightly entitled to a net 6 per cent profit or thereabouts yearly. 2. Why is it that our Public Service Commission sits defiantly defiant-ly by and refuses to perform its sworn duty to regulate this private pri-vate utility and force Salt Lake citizens to endure this bureaucratic bureau-cratic exploitation and abuse. 3. If our PSC were doing their duty, they would not even consider con-sider another public hearing or raise in rates until they had first forced the public holding company com-pany to replace every cent of excessive funds unlawfully taken from the surplus earnings of the local ifrm. In private1 business, such wrongly removed funds, when discovered, would have to be speedily replaced to say nothing noth-ing of the penalty that would be meted out to the guilty one. This is a parallel case exactly, and if individual members of Utah's PSC persist in doing nothing about this offense or offenders, then the public can have little or no faith in their further ad-minitsration. ad-minitsration. 4. To now whitewash this offense of-fense and go ahead with another expensive public hearing would be to degenerate the public hearings hear-ings under this Commission to a mere sham and farce. It's a travesty trav-esty on justice when we elect and appoint public officials and then as constituents we have to go to the vpense of hearings and go to the expense of hearings and court procedures to secure the very rights which public officials of-ficials were elected to protect. 5. If and when the bus company com-pany is honestly in need of higher high-er bus rates, I am sure the public pub-lic will be reasonable and go along in this matter, but until the funds in question have been replaced to buy new equipment and meet pay roll increases as claimed it would be adding insult in-sult to injury for the Commission Commis-sion to grant increased bus fares. It is safe to predict that the commission com-mission will allow the increases asked for unless the public concerned con-cerned can exert enough influence influ-ence and power to force the PSC to first demand return of the funds in question, and then, and only after this is done, would be the proper time to determine the need for further funds for the bus company. Lorenzo E. Elggren. Former State Senator and President of Consumers Welfare League. |