The Maryland Public Policy Institute has been making news on one of those important yet seemingly esoteric issues: the means of pricing electricity.

In an editorial, the Baltimore Examiner says that a truly free market for electricity doesn't exist, for various technical and political reasons. Yet regulation isn't much help, either.

"As Peter Van Doren of the Cato Institute and University of Maryland Baltimore County professor Timothy Brennan said at a Maryland Public Policy Institute forum ..., no simple solutions exist to lowering electricity prices in either a regulated market or a partially deregulated market like Maryland." The editorial, which carries the headline "Give consumers control over their electric bills," calls for real-time metering and pricing as one option.

Another article, however, suggests that what Maryland needs is a return to a more aggressive regulatory stance. It give the last word, literally if not figuratively, to MPPI president Chris Summers:

Christopher Summers, president of the conservative Maryland Public Policy Institute, said history is "littered with examples" of how state planning has failed. He said spending more money is not going to help.

"Whether you add the jobs [to a state regulatory agency] or not, it does nothing to change things," he said. "More regulation is not going to change things."