Sens. Pipkin and Rosepepe are asking the Public Service Commission to make Exelon's proposed purchase of Constellation Energy dependent on a spinoff of Baltimore Gas & Electric, Constellation's subsidiary. Forget it, says Exelon President Chris Crane, which is what everybody expected. Exelon wants BGE's steady cash flow to balance its less predictable unregulated operations.

But it's an interesting thought experiment. How would BGE operating as a separate, publicly traded corporation change the way BGE works?

-- BGE's stock price could languish, as the market would probably get the message that Maryland regulators would never allow anybody to acquire the company.

-- Depending on how the company fared with future rate increases, BGE could end up paying a half-decent dividend yield. Investors would expect most of their return to come from income, not capital gains. But the spinoff would probably hurt existing shareholders.

-- For ratepayers, requiring a spinoff would be less risky than having the state seize BGE through eminent domain, which would require compensation paid to shareholders and lots of debt put on BGE's books.

-- Spinning off BGE doesn't by itself remove Constellation's grip on the regional wholesale power market or solve the larger problem of where Maryland gets its electricity. We need new generation plants not controlled by Constellation, which the senators propose would be built by BGE.

-- Having BGE itself build new power plants might be riskier for ratepayers than having BGE sign a long-term power-purchase deal with independent generation developers. (This is the direction the state is moving in anyway -- very slowly.) After a decade of deregulation, BGE has lost much (all?) of its expertise in plant development.

-- An independent BGE would be safe from financial raids by Exelon or some other deregulated holding company. But it might not be able to borrow money as cheaply as it can when owned by a bigger company.