It used to be in UK when gas was made from coal that the local city owned the plant making the coal gas. They also did other useful functions like water supply & reticulation, sewerage, transport - buses & trams. In my birthplace they also provided the free light show that to this day is a huge attraction bringing millions of tourists to the town & profit to the local economy. More importantly it resulted in tens of thousands of people being employed & having pride in their town with the knowledge that what return accumulated to the council ultimately benefited them rather than foreign investors demanding greater & greater dividends.

That is how you create citizen security & wellbeing, build loyalty, maximise productivity and create respect of citizens & citizens knowing their self worth.

Not through worker exploitation, degradation, bullying, unfair taxation, international bribery corruption & piracy, promulgating wars, destroying other's successes or imposing sanctions because you don't like their politics or refusal to allow exploitation & subversion of their citizens.

Here in Victoria Australia the State government has created various opportunities for rorting. Firstly in electric supply regional distributors are responsible for the overhead cabling. Competion is the allowed for retail companies to sell the electricity. Historically the power was produced at coal fired generating stations on the coal fields in the state's east. Accordingly users in the west had a far higher transport cost for the distribution accrods the state. Nowadays huge generating capacity through wind farms has been created in the west. The cost of distribution to the west has not occurred because a lot of the wind generated power has been sold for use a thousand kilometers away. Frequently the retail companies are not owned locally but by offshore companies that apply clever accounting to move profits offshore so that no tax is paid in Australia.
So yes I agree with your claim that your US cities are applying rorted charging for no benefit.

garbage in garbage out

But you aren't a highly paid state government ombudsman conciliator either.