Martin DyckmanThe title of the Florida Public Service Commission is about as relevant to reality as that of the People’s Republic of China. In each case, the true constituency is a narrow group of self-perpetuating special interests.
Making the public interest the true constituency of the PSC ought to be high on the agenda of the Constitution Revision Commission that will be appointed in 2017. Whether that can happen depends on who’s elected governor and attorney general on Nov. 4.
Gov. Rick Scott affirmed the current reality in his recent reappointment of one undeserving PSC member and his choice of a restaurant owner with no regulatory or economic expertise to fill a vacant seat.
But if State Rep. Jimmy Patronis has no apparent qualifications other than having paid large electric bills, he was a get-along-go-along member of the Legislature, which controls the PSC more than the governor does. Moreover, Patronis volunteered for the well-paid, well-pensioned PSC rather than run against an even more important House member, Matt Gaetz, for the seat of his father, Senate President Don Gaetz.
Here’s what the Tampa Bay Times had to say about Patronis:
“No current legislator is more hostile to environmental regulation and friendlier to industry and agricultural interests.”
So there’s one vote, at least, for the electric power industry’s pending petition to scrap Florida’s energy efficiency standards.
This is the same PSC that’s allowing Duke Energy to hit ratepayers for more than $3 billion for nuclear plants that won’t be built. The same PSC that was going to let Duke stick it to them again through a new metering system until even the conscience of the Legislature was shocked.
When Charlie Crist was governor, the PSC turned down a huge increase in electric bills. The Senate then refused to confirm two members whom Crist had appointed and the PSC nominating counsel refused even to interview two incumbents Crist had reappointed.
The council is controlled by the Legislature. The Legislature is controlled by the utilities. The PSC is thus a subsubsidiary of the industries it’s supposed to regulate.
Crist is promising to fix this mess if he replaces Scott in his old office. To do that — considering what the Legislature is — he needs a cooperative Constitution Revision Commission. It has the power to place amendments directly on the ballot whether the Legislature likes them or not.
But the Legislature’s presiding officers will appoint 18 of the 37 members. Even if all of Crist’s 15 commission appointees were committed to PSC reform, they would need help from the two remaining quarters: the attorney general, who is automatically a member, and the three people to be appointed by the chief justice.
So if you want the PSC to become what it is supposed to be, you need Crist as governor and he needs George Sheldon as attorney general to help him. Pam Bondi –unlike Crist when he was attorney general — has shown no concern for ratepayers.
Utilities should be regulated as banking and insurance are — by a professional agency appointed by the governor and Cabinet.
The Legislature’s ownership of the PSC has a curious history.
In 1969, a new Constitution required the executive branch to be reorganized into no more than 25 departments. The PSC and the utilities wanted to be no part of a genuine regulatory agency. Someone prevailed on Gov. Claude Kirk to request a Supreme Court advisory opinion on whether the reorganization provision applied to the PSC.
Utility regulation is inherently a legislative power, the court said, and while it could be delegated — as to an elected commission — the agency was exempt from the mandatory reorganization.
The court added, helpfully, that the Legislature could still do what it wished — even to making the PSC an appointed agency under the governor or the governor and Cabinet. But the Legislature wasn’t interested in any change. As it happened, one of the PSC members was a former legislator with the nickname “Coach.”
It seemed like a good idea at the time when Gov. Reubin Askew and the 1978 Legislature agreed to making the PSC an appointed body. The concern was that an increasingly politicized PSC wouldn’t have the nerve to raise rates even when they were needed to increase generating capacity.
But the Legislature’s price was to take control through the nominating council. The council promptly tried to dump one of Askew’s superb appointed commissioners with a man whose only qualification was being the haberdasher to Senate President W. D. Childers.
Public outrage spoiled that plot. But now Florida has Patronis.
Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg Times. He lives near Waynesville, North Carolina. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
