In one of Allen Drury's Advise and Consent-series novels, a character says to the prime minister of India something like "Just because it's called the 'Indian Ocean' doesn't give your country special rights over it." I believe the debate over the future of Portland General Electric would have gone quite differently had the company been called "Multnomah General Electric" or "Tri-County General Electric," and the City Council would not have been so focused on determining how Portland could buy the company without including other local governments.
PGE doesn't serve just Portland. Its service area (shown here as a map in PDF) includes portions of seven counties: Columbia, Washington, Multnomah, Clackamas, Yamhill, Marion, and Polk. And it doesn't serve all of Portland, its territory most notably excluding most of Northeast and a fair amount of North Portland. (It also doesn't serve Powell's downtown bookstore and seven other blocks of Northwest Portland between Burnside and Davis Streets.)
Any PGE deal needs support in Salem. It's not so easy for the City of Portland to get legislative support for its pet projects, certainly not given the makeup of the legislature. By contrast, an organization composed of the seven PGE counties and a number of their cities would get much better treatment and any legislative help it needed. It also would fairly reflect the interests of all the customers of PGE. And having a broader base of taxing authority will give the organization more muscle if it should want to issue bonds.
Let's call it the Willamette River Electric Company to show that it's something bigger than Portland, as it would have to be to succeed. (Pronounce it as an acronym, as with "WPPSS" becoming "Whoops," if you don't like the idea.)
In a later post, sparked by a discussion on Jack Bog's Blog, I'll give my thoughts on how to buy PGE. But the place to start is to recognize that PGE is a lot bigger than Portland.