Robert Miklos

Atmos Is Acting Like Wall Street

When a company delivers a service, like electricity or natural gas, they deserve to be rewarded for giving the public a vital need and creating jobs. When one of those companies endangers thousands by neglecting to replace dangerous and dilapidated pipelines, they need to fix the problem and apologize. They don’t need to compound the problem with the sort of corporate greed we’ve seen on Wall Street.

But that’s exactly what Atmos Energy is doing. After ignoring a problem that resulted in the loss of life, they’re going to give themselves a $100 million pat on the back.

View the WFAA story on the issue at WFAA.com.

Recently, the Texas Railroad Commission put forth a plan allowing Atmos Energy to collect up to $100 million in profit for fixing their own mistake. The Dallas Morning News described this sort of profiteering as “unconscionable,” urging local governments to “be vigilant in monitoring the companies to make sure they don’t profit one penny from this proposed order.”

I agree. We’ve witnessed far too many examples of corporate greed and irresponsibility resulting in higher costs for families. This dramatically affects working Texans. We must hold these companies accountable so that consumers are protected, and that our priorities at home are the priorities in Austin.

I hope you’ll take the Pocketbook Priorities Survey at RobertMiklos.com today.

It’s one thing for all of us to share in the costs of these long overdue safety upgrades, but does Atmos really deserve to make an additional profit out of our pockets just for doing the minimum to save lives? No one pays us to put a safety inspection sticker on our car. This is the same old Wall Street double standard.

Please let me hear from you. Take our brief survey at RobertMiklos.com.