Dan,
We always have our tenants put the utilites in their name. Water service requires a seperate meter for each side if it's a duplex. All of our units are single houses so we're ok there.

"Skip outs" can be and are a problem for the utilites.
One city, Cuyahoga Falls, has been trying to pass a law that the landlord has have the utilites in their name, then try to collect each month from the tenants or include the utilities in the rent.
Naturally, they won't help us out if we can't collect from a tenant, and they won't pay us a monthly fee for collecting payments for them....