Absolutely not. The way to spend as much money as possible is to do intentionally inefficient repairs (e.g. last minute/reactive). The providers gain from grid unreliability since by causing problems, they get to justify spending money to "fix" them.

I'm sure it sounds good to you as long as it's OPM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averch%E2%80%93Johnson_effect

It's about threading the needle between a well funded grid, and an over engineered grid. There's a point where diminishing returns makes investment greater than that threshold wasteful relative to opportunity cost of spending that tax money on different public services.

Depends on if the investments were in the right stuff or not. Overbuilt sounds great, so long as it’s overbuilt in capacity and reliability.

If those were malinvestments instead it’s simply throwing money away for not even a theoretical “someday” return. Plenty of ways to look busy while spending massive amounts of capital.

Generally agreed in principle though. Investment in the grid is pathetic almost everywhere in the US and has been for generations.

They said excessively expensive, not excessively robust. There is a difference.

Except for the cost to the ratepayers.