Mitch Perry
Advocates attempting to get a constitutional amendment on next year’s ballot regarding solar power were hit with perhaps the most serious challenge yet to their efforts Wednesday: a newly formed group with the goal of placing a competing solar power amendment on the 2016 ballot.
In Orlando Wednesday morning, the newly established group, Consumers for Smart Solar, launched its nascent campaign to place its amendment on the 2016 ballot. Organizers called it a “consumer-friendly alternative,” to Floridians for Solar Choice, the group formed at the beginning of this year to get a constitutional amendment on next year’s ballot. Floridians for Solar Power seeks to “encourage and promote local small-scale solar-generated electricity production and to enhance the availability of solar power to customers.”
“We believe this is a clear effort to deceive and confuse Florida voters in order to maintain the monopoly status quo,” said Mike Antheil, executive director of the Florida Solar Industries Association, on a conference call Wednesday afternoon.
“The citizens of Florida are not going to be confused by a very slick run media campaign by high paid consultants,” agreed Tory Perfetti, director of Floridians for Solar Choice.
One of Floridians for Solar Choice’s calling cards as a group is that they have assembled an amalgam of progressive and conservative organizations to support their effort. Entities standing behind it include the Florida Retail Federation, the League of Women Voters, the Tea Party Network, the Christian Coalition, the Libertarian Party of Florida and the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida.
It’s bitterly opposed, though, by much of the establishment in Florida, including investor-owner utilities such as Florida Power and Light and Duke Energy, as well as Attorney General Pam Bondi, who charged in a brief filed with the state Supreme Court last month that the measure’s ballot title and summary are misleading, and that the proposal violates the constitutional single-subject requirement.
Consumers for Smart Solar is led by former State Reps. Dick Batchelor of Orlando and Jim Kallinger of Winter Park. Also at their press conference in Orlando on Wednesday was former Public Service Commission Chairman Matthew M. Carter II, who warned that the solar power amendment proposed by Floridians for Solar Choice creates a “dangerous, privileged class of businesses” exempt from sensible regulation. Under that amendment, he said, solar energy facilities would be the only businesses in Florida granted constitutional immunity to consumer protection legislation.
Perfetti strongly objected to that of line criticism, saying there was no basis in fact for it.
“The mantra you’re hearing from opponents of what we’re doing is attempting to misdirect people into thinking that this is some kind of snobbish or elite type of organization, and we’re the grassroots, we’re the people, begging and asking for choice,” he said. “People are under attack everywhere when it comes to their utility bills, whether it’s businesses or citizens, and what this is is an attempt by us, as Floridians for Solar Choice to give citizens and businesses the ability to take further control of their own bills regarding energy, and to have the ability to lower them.”
Furthermore, he said, “Anyone who is standing against this is representing the actual elite class which controls how much people pay in this state.”
Both groups will now compete to get on the ballot next year, though Floridians for Solar Choice has a half-year head start on Consumers for Smart Solar. It has collected nearly 100,000 signatures for its proposal to prevent the state from regulating small, private solar companies that provide up to 2 megawatts of solar energy to properties that border them.
Both groups ultimately must get 688,314 vetted signatures by next February to qualify of the ballot. The Florida Supreme Court is scheduled to rule on Floridians for Solar Choice’s ballot language this year.
