[VLM]

The company will pay for nothing. Its a powerco not a mint. Their only significant revenue stream is electric bills (pole rental for telco fiber optics, pole rental for cable TV cables, all small amounts of money)

What we have here is a decision between one group of accountants getting electricity users to pay, vs a different group of accountants getting taxpayers to pay. The fraction of the population that are net positive taxpayers is much smaller than the fraction of the population that uses electricity, so in a democracy it would be surprising NOT to see the people deciding the few people who are net positive taxpayers will get the bill. The large chunk of the population that pay electric bills while being net negative taxpayers are not going to volunteer to pay more.