For all the non taxpayer owner utilities I am aware of, the margins and utility prices are completely controlled by government employees. Government employees that are hired by leaders that voters vote for.

Note that there exists the same incentives for publicly owned and investor owned utilities of voters today wanting lower utility prices at the expense of future utility customers by keeping capital expenses down today.

>I am fairly confident the cohort of those who support investor owned utilities are a vocal minority.

I will be the first to support only publicly owned utilities. But that has nothing to do with using bad logic and numbers to determine outsized margins.