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DN Editorial: Vanishing act

Reports on pending sale of PGW should come to light ASAP.

Mayor Nutter with James Torgerson (left), of UIL Holdings, in March. The Conn. utility hopes to buy PGW. (Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer)
Mayor Nutter with James Torgerson (left), of UIL Holdings, in March. The Conn. utility hopes to buy PGW. (Alejandro A. Alvarez / Staff Photographer)Read more

AMONG THE mysteries associated with Philadelphia is one notable yarn dating back to 1943. That's when the Navy supposedly conducted an experiment at the Philadelphia Navy Yard that used electrical generators to try to bend light around an object to make it invisible.

The story goes they tried this on a ship, the USS Eldridge, and were successful not only in making the ship "disappear" but also to be instantly transported to Norfolk, Va.

It was called the Philadelphia Experiment.

A more recent mystery also involving invisibility is the status of the pending sale of Philadelphia Gas Works.

Back in March, Mayor Nutter announced that after a bidding process, UIL Holdings Corp. offered to buy the city-owned utility for $1.86 billion. Such a deal would be subject to approval by City Council and the Public Utilities Commission.

Council said it wanted to do its own due diligence on the proposed sale, and in June hired Concentric Energy Advisors to prepare a report evaluating the sale. A six-week timeline was anticipated. Then Council asked for an additional report that would evaluate other options for PGW if the sale wasn't approved.

Are those reports done? Or have they been subjected to bending light rays to make them disappear? Hard to say. Council apparently has been briefed on at least one of the reports, but so far, the public is still in the dark.

And it's October.

PGW's history is as checkered as it gets: once a textbook case in patronage, mismanagement and fiscal chaos, in later years got turned around with competent management and achieved a measure of fiscal stability.

But the utility still has a debt that exceeds $1 billion. It's one of the few utilities still municipally owned. A key question is the wisdom of a big, challenged city like Philadelphia running a gas company, especially as other less complicated assets are under review.

You'd think that everyone would be on board - if not to sell the thing, at least to make an expedient decision about how to move forward. But Council continues to delay a process, which could, in the end, jeopardize the sale to UIL.

For one thing, at least $425,000 in public money was spent for the Council reports. Council President Darrell Clarke has not indicated his views on the sale - which is opposed by PGW workers and others - only the need for careful due diligence, which, eight months in from the winning bid, feels more like delay than diligence.

The silence from Council is curious, especially since Clarke has been in favor of asset sales in general.

We want to hear an objective third party view on the sale. The public should be looped in as soon as possible and hearings should be held on this. Given PGW's history - and its current status as a valuable asset - this is too important an issue for foot-dragging.

Especially since the sale could impact everyone in the city, from PGW customers and workers to 64,000 past and present city employees. That's because up to $630 million in proceeds from the sale are earmarked as a one-time infusion to help defray the $5.3 billion deficit in the city's pension fund.

The analysis of the pending sale is bound to be complicated, requiring thought and debate. The sooner we begin the public process, the better.

Council should bring its reports into the light as soon as possible.