While this post focuses on a local election (for me), it has repercussions for the future of public power and how local leaders respond to public calls for energy democracy. Ann Arbor City Council presented a blueprint for bad acting that needs to be called out.
If I had to ascribe a public persona to DTE Energy, it would be someone with immeasurable ego, bent on both breaking the rules and breaking down democratic institutions, on enriching itself on the backs of working people and targeting Black, Brown, Native, and immigrant communities and with a pattern of violence toward women. It is quite obvious that DTE is the utility incarnation of the man we served a massive referendum to on Election Day.
DTE is the ultimate slumlord, but Ann Arborites, overwhelmed by ads and misinformation from both DTE and then from their own City Council, have narrowly voted down Prop E. That vote, means we will continue renting broken, high carbon infrastructure from DTE indefinitely. I fear we will look back on the defeat of Prop E decades from now, having paid more than we ever imagined for a broken system, with those with the least amount of money bearing the brunt of it. DTE will keep on sponsoring our mountain bike trails, electric school buses and arts and culture programs to pacify us while they allow the grid to crumble further (and then charge us to rebuild it).
I’m grateful to live in a City full of visionary climate and energy champions. I also can’t just let City Council’s astoundingly pro-DTE, anti-public power actions of the last month slide.
If we want the climate and energy leadership of Ann Arbor to be more than a 29 square-mile bubble, as Jackson Koeppel imagines, we will have to see that backing off a fight with the Donald Trump of monopoly investor-owned utility companies means missing a rare opportunity to dismantle a key piece of the energy system that threatens planetary survival. In places like Texas, the floodgates burst. in Ann Arbor, City Council, working closely with DTE, is busy patching the cracks with silly putty.
I am disgusted, but not surprised, that DTE was able to overcome (by a mere 2,003 votes) an energized movement for public power in Ann Arbor–for now. Pumping $2 million to front the bogus Ann Arbor “Responsible Energy Coalition” and suing the City over valid signatures that organizers collected to get Prop E on the ballot is par for DTE’s course.
Rather than calling out DTE’s efforts to interfere in local democracy, Ann Arbor followed suit, literally, and served A2P2 a lawsuit days before the election. This on the heels of the Council resolution rebuking residents for supporting public power and misleading residents about what Prop E would actually do. City Council fearmongered about Prop E’s potential cost, which was essentially $0 at this stage. Kudos to Councilmember Cynthia Harrison for holding her ground as the lone no vote against the resolution. (After killing Prop E, the City’s lawyers are now planning to drop the suit.)
Ann Arbor City Council could instead have just as easily passed a resolution that shared the dark truths about DTE with its residents. Instead, it chose to make a deal with the slumlord, cover for its abuses, and reprint its propaganda.
The Council resolution is rife with hypocrisy. It called Prop E financially reckless, after voting that it would not vote with due diligence to conduct a Phase 2 feasibility study. Councilmembers posted a range of costs from $200 million to $1 billion in other forums, but the resolution only talks about an assets value in the billions. The resolution fears ceding any control over finances, even though it would be to a democratically elected board and Council could still override it with eight votes (it whipped ten votes for the anti-Prop E resolution). Presumably, the resolution won the City some favor from DTE to move forward with minimal opposition to its Sustainable Energy Utility, which DTE must see as more palatable than a full municipal takeover. Ann Arbor guarded its own sandbox, DTE extinguished the existential threat of a supposed utility death spiral. What teamwork–bravo!
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We have long known that DTE has infiltrated the ranks of more than 90% of Michigan elected officials with campaign funding and sends millions of our ratepayer dollars to anti-clean energy groups like the Edison Electric Institute. That DTE managed to fend off the will of a generally well-educated, progressive, climate-concerned people by explicitly working hand in glove with City Council is what stings.
Councilmember Jenn Cornell (whom I don’t know personally), sponsored the resolution at the A2 City Council. Cornell is also president of the Ann Arbor Art Center (A2AC); A2AC is a recipient of DTE Foundation grants; DTE’s Director of Corporate Strategy, Yujia Zhou, sits on A2AC’s board. To be clear, I’m not accusing Cornell of deliberate wrongdoing; I used to run an environmental justice non-profit in Detroit and getting DTE out of our budget was exceedingly difficult. But the conflict of interest these financial tendrils of DTE pose is also undeniable. DTE is always game to pay for allies–just from 2020-2024, the DTE Foundation has “charitably” funded nearly 1,000 organizations to the tune of $100 million in total.
We might not be in this situation if not for radical, anti-democratic action by DTE forty-four years ago, when it defeated Prop G in 1982. Proposal G would have allowed Michiganders to elect utility regulators at the Michigan Public Service Commission, rather than have them appointed by the governor. In addition to an $84 million opposition campaign (in 1982 dollars), DTE took the “unprecedented” step of requiring thousands of its employees to hit the streets and the polling places to campaign against Prop G. “We did so because the ballot issues were of such grave concern to us,” CEO Walter McCarthy explained nakedly. DTE killed Prop G and set energy democracy back decades. In 2026, the people of Michigan are still the subjects of our royal utility monopolies. DTE now enjoys a virtually impenetrable 9.9% Return On Equity (ROE) and its customers pay higher rates than any others in the Midwest, returning that $84 million investment (of ratepayer dollars!) in spades.
After blocking even the possibility of a thoughtful path to public power, DTE customers in Ann Arbor will continue to pay an extra 20% charge just to enrich DTE’s shareholders. That’s 451 bucks a year we are “charitably” donating to DTE. By the time my kid turns 18 I’ll have forked over an excess $8,000 to hold up DTE’s profits.
What do we get in return? A utility that is in the bottom five on reliability nationally, that systematically removes political opponents–Public Service Commissioners included–and that bribes community leaders to provide public comments its executives have ghost written. We get no-choice service from a utility that made the Hall of Shame for executing more shutoffs for non-payment than nearly any other in the country while reaping record profits. We get a utility that ripped 1,400 streetlights out of Highland Park, a city that is 82% Black and was further decimated by emergency management. We get a utility that sparked the term “utility redlining” in majority BIPOC neighborhoods and slashed $122 million from its grid maintenance budget in favor of meeting its pledge of doling out $700 million in shareholder dividends.
Months after abdicating grid maintenance responsibilities, DTE personnel were entirely MIA for hours when Ann Arbor Emergency Services tried to reach them during the catastrophic February 2023 ice storm. Thousands of us were out of power for up to six cold days as DTE slowly mounted a response. We paid an extra penalty for generators, nights in hotel rooms, staying home with kids whose schools were still powerless, and keeping the faucets running so pipes didn’t freeze. But DTE merely used its abysmal performance to justify additional rate hikes, which the Michigan Public Service Commission, now more favorable to DTE, has approved annually.
This is a company without parallel, one that sold customer debt for pennies on the dollar, leading to massive unannounced wage garnishment by predatory debt collectors. You could spend the next year reading through Karlee Weinmann’s exposés alone and still not have sifted through all the dirt on DTE.
There is no question in my mind that without the City’s resolution and lawsuit against Ann Arbor for Public Power (A2P2), the ballot initiative would have passed and overcome the $2 million in dirty money from DTE. If the City wants to go all in on the Sustainable Energy Utility, so be it. The SEU is a brilliant but narrow workaround for energy efficiency services and more renewables, but it will not rectify the way DTE treats our grid and our people. Ann Arborites deserve to decide without Council’s election interference if they want to take on our goliath slumlord. The last thing the City should be doing, with taxpayer dollars, is joining DTE to file lawsuits that aim to suppress democratic control of our utility.
Every time I flip a switch or hear my heat kick on, I wince, thinking of $451 from every Ann Arborite’s pocket getting sucked into some distant DTE bank account as the NYSE:DTE stock price soars. City Council: If you’re not down with energy democracy, please just get out of the way.