Chad, I can’t imagine Duke or Progress Energy promoting a local tax proposal, but many municipalities maintain their own electrical systems. Smithfield, where I live, purchases power from Progress Energy, but maintains their own distribution system and metering. We pay the town for our electrical service (hint, at a higher rate than our friends out in the county), on the same bill with our water, sewage, and garbage collection.
Et voila, an opportunity to communicate with the taxpayers and voters.
FWIW I don’t find it problematic for local government to spend some time and some money communicating its needs and intentions to the electorate. I do object to lengthy promotional campaigns and costly recruitment drives, though, like the perpetually overcrowded Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools spending over three hundred thousand dollars to market CMS a few years ago, as if they were really ready to accommodate more growth than they already had.
