Doug Ford understood the promise of power — and the power of a promise — better than anyone.

To win political power, he harnessed electrical power in a way his rivals had never attempted.

At every campaign stop last year, Ford vowed to neutralize the “Six Million Dollar Man” — a sly reference to the mighty “bionic man” of television fame, which he transposed onto the supersized salary of Hydro One’s then-CEO, Mayo Schmidt. For a mere $6 million, voters’ anger could be salved, their grievances solved.

It worked. Until it didn’t.

Ford got the job of premier. Schmidt lost his well-paying job.

This week, a new chair was quietly chosen at Hydro One, the partially privatized transmission utility that is still 47 per cent provincially owned. The move to patch up a bitterly divided board was the culmination of a year of upheaval and interference that undermined Ontario’s reputation as a place to do business.

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The image of severing the CEO’s head — without any severance — had undeniable populist appeal. But the decapitation generated cascading financial costs that dwarfed his annual salary, and Ontarians are still paying the price:

First, Schmidt walked away with a handsome $10.7 million in severance and stock options, despite the premier’s assurances that it would be essentially costless.

Second, Ford’s intervention caused catastrophic harm to the utility’s takeover of U.S.-based Avista Corp., because local state regulators concluded that the Ontario government was calling the shots rather than Hydro One management. When they overruled the transaction, it triggered a “kill fee” that cost Hydro One about $139 million, on top of Schmidt’s severance.

Add it all up: Ford upbraided the Six Million Dollar Man but upgraded him to the One Hundred Fifty Million Dollar Man — or a $150 million mess.

Third, Ford’s intervention paralyzed management and divided the board in the aftermath. The only way to fire the CEO was to dump Hydro One’s directors (the board instead offered to resign in a seamless transition).

As the biggest single shareholder, the government reshaped the new board to its liking. But there was soon no love lost, because it quickly echoed the thinking of the old board on CEO pay scales: It persisted with a suggested salary package of up to $2.8 million “to motivate highly qualified leadership” at Hydro One, a company with $25 billion in assets. “As you know, we have been in discussion with a very talented prospective CEO” wrote interim board chair Tom Woods, another Ford appointee who will step aside next month.

Noting the “significant divide” within the board, and among his own appointees, Energy Minister Greg Rickford countered with a $1.5 million annual cap (base salary plus incentives). Boxed in, the board signed up — unsurprisingly — a more affordable career executive from a publicly owned utility (Mark Poweska, a vice-president at BC Hydro).

Next month, Tim Hodgson takes over as government-appointed chair of a board that came together a year ago, and then came apart again. But Hydro One is hardly the only energy utility or business enterprise to be buffeted by Ford’s Tories.

Publicly owned Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has also lost its chief executive: Jeff Lyash, who left his $1.5 million-a-year job in February after cleaning up the mess from yet more meddling.

Last September, Ford’s then-chief of staff, Dean French, insisted that OPG dump its new vice-president of government relations, Alykhan Velshi — a longtime PC who held French’s job with two of Ford’s predecessors as party leader. The bizarrely personal personnel demands from the premier’s office not only created public embarrassment for a serious crown corporation, but triggered yet another hefty severance payment at a cost to taxpayers.

The government’s approach to both OPG and Hydro One bespeaks a compulsion to meddle in the management affairs of government-owned enterprises — and belies the pro-business image that Tories pride themselves on. One of Ford’s favourite campaign slogans (apart from buck-a-beer and the Six Million Dollar Man) was his boast that Ontario would be “Open for Business” — yet his eagerness to rip up signed contracts in both the beer and energy sectors has been more closed-minded than ever imagined.

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Yes, Schmidt was assuredly overpaid, but it wasn’t worth $150 million to make him go away — and it was wrong to pretend it wouldn’t cost a penny. Amid these internecine machinations, it is easy to lose sight of the larger challenges facing the energy sector — and the premier’s past promises, large and small.

Forgotten in the disruption is Ford’s bigger promise on the campaign trail to reduce electricity costs by 12 per cent. Yet after all this time, and so much rhetoric, residential rates have barely budged.

A year after achieving the exercise of political power, the premier cannot so easily exorcise the demons of power generation. Ford’s fix is in, and the damage is done.

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