When is a non-profit energy company set up to save taxpayers money not non-profit and not saving taxpayers money?

Short answer: when it’s the Illinois Energy Consortium. This is an outfit set up in 1999 by the Illinois Association of School Boards, the Illinois Association of School Business Officials and the Illinois Association of School Administrators, ostensibly to help schools get better deals on gas and electricity. Perhaps they have sometimes done that. But they’ve also been doing something else as well, apparently: collecting fat fees that have nothing to do with utility costs.

Thanks to a recently filed lawsuit in Cook County, it’s coming to light that most of the $4.5 million in fees collected from school districts over the last three years has gone into the pockets of the consortium’s creators. Many district officials are saying they had no idea that such fees were being charged. Many have also been signing expensive energy contracts from the consortium without getting competitive bids.

The situation is still being sorted out, but it would not have come to wide public attention at all without the efforts of two community leaders: attorney Todd Rowden and taxpayer William Tarsitano.

Tarsitano contacted Rowden after the Palatine Township High School District signed an energy contract with the consortium worth millions, and without bothering to get other bids. Rowden is doing the legal work for free.

“We deserve better,” Rowden says. “I decided that instead of simply standing quietly by and allowing this to happen, I would do something.”

Mr. Rowden, that’s common sense. And so is this. I’m Paul Jacob.