For the second straight year, Commonwealth Edison’s delivery rates are falling modestly following Illinois Commerce Commission action on the formula rate for 2020. Or are they?

The commission yesterday approved a $17 million reduction in ComEd’s delivery rates as requested by the utility. In a release, ComEd delivered the good news, saying the average residential customer would see their monthly electric bill decline by 60 cents next year.

But the release didn’t tell the whole story. ComEd’s net rates actually will climb by $33 million next year thanks to a move late last month to boost ComEd’s customer charge by $50 million for the energy-efficiency programs it administers. That Nov. 26 ICC ruling wasn't the subject of any ComEd press release.

Households still will see their delivery rates fall modestly even though ComEd’s revenues are climbing, a spokesman said. The average bill will decline 20 cents instead of the 60 cents reported in the release. But that’s only because commercial customers will see higher rates to ensure ComEd gets the increased revenue, he allowed.

At the same time, the ICC rejected entreaties by the office of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to revisit a controversial decision it made last year to permit ComEd to take nearly 40 years to refund $384 million in excess payments it's received from ratepayers to cover taxes. In testimony filed with the ICC, Raoul’s office said a more reasonable five-year payback period would have given customers a $62 million refund next year.

The issue was created when the 2017 tax law signed by President Donald Trump substantially reduced corporate taxes. ComEd had collected money from ratepayers in advance to cover tax payments that it had anticipated would be far higher.

"The customers whose rates included income tax expenses at the higher 35% rate, collected before the 2018 tax law change, should receive the refund of this excess amount currently in the ... balance," Raoul's office said in ICC testimony filed Oct. 30. "Amortizing this excess amount over 38 remaining years denies refunds to the very customers who paid ComEd’s tax expense at the previously higher rate, and is fundamentally unfair to current ratepayers."

The commission held a hearing Nov. 25 on the tax issue, but ICC Chair Carrie Zalewski and other commissioners didn’t explain their decision during yesterday's meeting.

Both positive outcomes for ComEd underscore that the utility, while its influence weakens in the midst of a wide-ranging federal political-corruption probe centered on its lobbying practices, is hardly impotent.

Zalewski, whose father-in-law former Southwest Side Ald. Michael Zalewski is entangled in the federal probe involving ComEd, declined the opportunity via the unusual tax-repayment arrangement to demonstrate her willingness to confront ComEd over a hard-to-defend state action benefiting the utility. An appointee of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, she wasn't on the commission when it originally decided the matter last year.

The growing ComEd profits from the energy-efficiency program, due to changes in state law enacted just three years ago, are another government-influence success story. The Future Energy Jobs Act, best known for the ratepayer bailout of two Illinois nuclear power plants owned by Exelon, also permitted ComEd for the first time to earn a profit on its programs to reduce electricity consumption in homes and businesses. The revenue ComEd will reap next year from the program is jumping to $104 million from $54 million this year.

“Energy efficiency investments empower families and businesses to reduce their energy use and bills and their environmental impact,” ComEd said in a statement. “Our energy efficiency program has saved ComEd customers more than $4.3 billion on their electricity bills since 2008. The Future Energy Jobs Act that Illinois passed in 2016 recognized the success of these energy efficiency efforts and requires us to deliver even more value to customers, including those who have lower incomes, by increasing our investment. These investments are expected to create $7 billion in customer savings over time and reduce carbon emissions equal to taking 9 million cars off the road for a year.”

Not counting the energy-efficiency increases, ComEd’s delivery-rate decrease is the second consecutive one under the 2011 formula-rate law (another lobbying triumph) in which ComEd sets its delivery rate each year with relatively little ability by the regulators at the ICC to change it. Over the eight years since the law passed, ComEd’s delivery rates have climbed more than 35 percent, but the slight decreases were evidence the utility pointed to of why the state should extend the generous formula-rate authority for 10 years after it expires in 2022.

A bill to do that, which appeared on track for passage, was shelved in May as federal raids on the homes and businesses of lobbyists for ComEd were taking place.

ComEd says the power-grid infrastructure improvements financed by those higher delivery rates have cut down on outages and improved reliability and customer satisfaction. At the same time, overall electric bills have stayed stable since 2011, mainly because the cost of energy itself has dropped significantly in that period. More than half of a customer’s electric bill goes for the cost of the energy itself.