CWLP’s history in public power operations runs deep. Right here in the capital city, CWLP set the stage for local control with a focus on system reinvestment for Springfield citizens rather than stakeholder profit. It was CWLP’s U.S. Supreme Court judgment against Springfield Gas and Electric Company (forerunner to CILCO) in 1921 that allowed for a municipality to go into business, which paved the way for all public power utilities to have the legal right to operate.
Pictured here is the then-privately-owned plant for Capital Electric Company, which was organized in 1894. The company made an agreement with the City of Springfield to build a plant at 10th and Reynolds Streets and to purchase all necessary equipment to operate the City's 381 electric street lights at a cost of $113.33 per lamp per year. The private investors were to be paid back with interest and at the end of five years in 1900, after all were reimbursed, ownership of the Capital Electric Plant was to be transferred to the City of Springfield free and clear.
That transfer of the plant didn't happen as planned in 1900 and didn't come easy. For an additional five years the commercial portion of the business was allowed to be leased to the Capital Electric. In 1905 when the lease expired, the owners refused to relinquish the plant.
Eventually, on October 10, 1906, Mayor Harry H. Devereaux sent a wagon-load of police to take over the plant. He proclaimed, "better service and economy in operation...will always be the aim of this administration in running the City's own lighting plant."
The City’s entry into electric sales began October 1, 1915 when the City's Department of Public Property, forerunner to CWLP, began serving its first commercial light and power customers through large-scale electric sales.
The road to municipal operation and electric sales, came after years of struggle between the utility and a movement believed to be organized by a private electric company and its investors to stop such commerce.
Despite push-back, Willis Spaulding, head of the Department of Public Property, took his case to the public to purchase a generator that would allow for large-scale electric sales, and on Dec. 1, 1913 presented the council with a petition signed by over 5,600 voters calling or a referendum on the issue.
Willis Spaulding
The referendum to purchase a generator passed on Jan, 27 1914 by 668 votes. However, even after this approval, there was an opposition movement believed by Spaulding and others to be supported by Springfield Gas and Electric Company (Later CILCO), to not honor the contract for the new generator. Private citizens filed injunctions that prevented the City from using, first, water works funds and then, corporate funds to pay for the new generator.
In light of these obstacles, Spaulding instead raised monies privately without using water works or corporate funds. He solicited customers who were willing to pay for installation of their electric services in advance with the promise that the utility would pay them back in kwh of electricity. He raised more than $100,000 and moved forward with plans for the new generator.
As he did in 1914, when it was time to expand and add another generator, in 1916 he took a referendum to the people and it was voted in favor by a margin of three to one, to purchase another new generator. It was during this 1916 campaign that Spaulding placed a newspaper ad in which for the first time he used a singular signature of “City Water, Light & Power” to refer to both utilities.
Springfield Gas and Electric wasn’t giving up its fight and took its case to court, claiming the City had failed to receive authority from the ICC to produce and sell electricity to private consumers and charging the conduct of the City amounted to extortion against the private company because CWLP was wrongfully luring away its customers.
But in 1921, when the suit reached the US Supreme Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes issued the majority opinion that municipal utilities are not in the same category as private utilities and , therefore, would not fall under the Illinois Public Utility Act or the jurisdiction of the ICC. “The private corporation, whatever its public duties, is organized for private ends...the municipal corporation is allowed to go into business only on the theory that thereby the public welfare will be subserved.” And, “the conduct of which the plaintiff complains is not extortion,’ but, on the contrary, charging rates that draw the plaintiff’s customers away.”
