In 2009, a consortium of six institutional investors, five of them Canadian and European pension funds, acquired a major Washington investor-owned utility in a $7.4 billion leveraged buyout, per UTC ownership-transfer records. The deal was structured through a holding company, with the utility as its operating subsidiary.
The current ownership structure, as confirmed by WA Utilities and Transportation Commission filings and investor disclosures, identifies the beneficial owners through Puget Holdings LLC as:
OMERS (Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System) 23.9% • British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) 20.9% • Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan 15.8% • Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets 15.8% • AIMCo (Alberta Investment Management Corporation) 13.6% • PGGM (Dutch pension fund) 10.0%, per UTC ownership-transfer records and AIMCo annual-report records.
The ownership percentages above reflect the current structure as confirmed by WA UTC filings and investor press releases. The original 2009 consortium was led by Macquarie and included CPPIB (which sold its stake in 2021-2022 to OMERS and Ontario Teachers), and the current six-fund structure is the result of subsequent stake transfers. What is verifiable from primary records: the utility is foreign-owned (Canada), the rate base has grown, and Congress has not restored a public-interest review for essential utility ownership changes since the 2005 repeal.
None of these investors are headquartered in Washington state. None have elected representatives accountable to local utility customers. All are entitled to a regulated return on capital invested in the utility’s rate base, a return approved by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission and collected from ratepayers.
The 34 Percent
From 2023 to 2026, electric rates for the utility increased approximately 30 percent in authorized rate cases before the UTC, compounding four successive rate increases from two UTC general rate cases (approximately 8.7% and 1.7% from the 2022 case, 12% and 6.3% from the 2024 case), per UTC rate-case dockets and tariff filings. UTC rate cases identify capital expenditure additions to the rate base, transmission infrastructure, grid modernization, and system investments as major pieces of the rate record. Watchtower is not treating ownership as the proved cause of the increases without additional UTC, tariff, and financial-filing receipts.
For a typical residential customer using 800 kWh per month, the investor-owned utility bill in early 2025 was approximately $122.16 per month, per UTC tariff filings. That is significantly higher than rates at Washington state public utility districts, where comparable residential bills often run $20 to $55 less per month for the same usage, depending on the district.
The cost is not abstract. As of the most recent public filings, approximately 92,000 customers are 90 or more days past due on their utility bills, per UTC public arrears filings. That is roughly one in eight residential accounts. Late fees compound. Shutoff notices follow. Reconnection fees add cost on top of arrears. The households absorbing those consequences are not investors. They are renters, homeowners, and families for whom electricity is not optional.
The Rate Base Incentive Problem
Regulated utilities earn a guaranteed percentage return on their rate base, the total capital investment approved by the UTC. This creates a structural incentive to over-invest in capital projects: more capital means a larger base, which means larger absolute returns at the same percentage rate. Critics call this the "Averch-Johnson effect," after the 1962 paper that formally modeled the problem.
The utility’s capital expenditure program accelerated after the 2009 acquisition. Pension funds need predictable cash yields to meet obligations to retirees. A regulated utility with an approved return can deliver those yields, especially when the rate base keeps growing.
What would change this story. If the approximately 30 percent rate increase is shown by UTC docket category data to be driven primarily by fuel cost recovery rather than rate-base capital additions, the ownership-structure causal chain weakens (the fuel-cost path is checkable against UTC Tariff filings), per UTC docket records. If the municipal-utility rate comparison fails to account for subsidies that narrow the rate gap, the affordability comparison weakens (PUD financial filings are public). If Congress is, in fact, currently advancing public-interest-review legislation that the WA-10 representative is cosponsoring, the lever-not-used framing weakens. The campaign has searched congress.gov for any Strickland cosponsorship on essential-utility public-interest review legislation. None has surfaced.
That is where Congress matters. The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 imposed ownership guardrails on essential utilities for seventy years. Congress repealed those guardrails in 2005 without building an equivalent protection for ratepayers. Congress can require stronger public-interest review before utility ownership changes hands, examine whether essential infrastructure should be treated primarily as a long-term financial asset, and condition federal energy policy on affordability, reliability, and local accountability. WA-10 deserves a representative who understands that the 2005 repeal left a gap and is willing to close it.