We battle an issue here with our local municipal utility. Since we are city owned and operated there are no property taxes paid on any infrastructure. Our city council has learned that it can take money from the utility coffers to fund their opperations. Our position as a Utility Commission is that this is taxation of citizens through their utility usage. The city council shrugs if off with lots of lame reasons, but it all comes down to being the only way they can raise revenue with the levy limits the state has imposed. In a town of 2,100 with about 1,200 meters (12k each water and electric) the city is taking about $140,000 or an average of $117 per customer in what I call tax per year.
Our son and his wife have seen their water bill go through the ceiling in their south central Kansas community lately. As we talked I explained to him that it sounds like the city has rolled some bonding into the utilities, and now they have had to raise their charges to pay the debt
We have all kinds of controls and oversight, supposedly, on private business, but who oversees and keeps governement in check.