Big Energy Increases Spending

The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy recently commissioned a report by Integrity Florida to update its eye-opening 2014 study on the political influence of Florida's top energy providers. The results, released this week, show that the problem has grown much worse in just a short period of time.

The non-partisan group examined political spending by utilities in the election cycles that have occurred since, while also looking at ways utility companies attempt to influence legislation and regulators through lobbying efforts.

It revealed that Florida’s four largest energy companies contributed more than $43 million to state level candidates, political parties and political committees in the 2014 and 2016 election cycles. Florida Power & Light (along with its parent company NextEra Energy) is by far the biggest player, contributing more than half of the total, followed by Duke Energy (formerly Progress Energy), TECO/Tampa Electric, and Gulf Power.

The combined political spending of these four companies in the most recent 4-year period was more than twice as much as in the previous 10-year period that was studied in the 2014 report–including more than $20 million on a deceptive 2016 ballot referendum that would have limited rooftop solar expansion.

Thankfully, that initiative failed, however, the failure was an exception to an otherwise consistent rule: Big Power routinely buys influence in Florida and uses it to successfully limit competition, keep prices and profits up at the expense of consumers, while avoiding regulations meant to protect the environment. They do this by dominating Tallahassee policy, employing more than one lobbyist for every two legislators while they are simultaneously stuffing money into the campaigns of lawmakers at all levels of state government.

To add insult to injury, they often use their customer's own money to finance their lobbying efforts. Of course this is supposed to be illegal, but regulators routinely turn a blind eye, allowing them to pay "dues" to various "trade groups" and "associations" that exist solely to lobby on their behalf.

Big Energy also uses money to influence legislators who serve on Florida’s Public Service Commission Nominating Council. The PSC, which Integrity Florida has previously called a "captured agency," is the regulating body for the industry, and it also decides requests by companies to have their rates hiked. Stacking the commission with members who are, shall we say, sympathetic to Big Energy, pays big dividends, again, at the expense of consumers. Because the PSC nominations are then decided by the governor, Big Energy has also been very generous to Rick Scott, along with the members of his cabinet.

By maintaining powerful influence with the governor, his cabinet, the PSC and state lawmakers, Big Energy has been able to mostly have its way, getting favorable legislation and tax credits, while taming competition from renewables. In doing so, they’ve also succeeded in preventing consumers from getting what they want: expanded access to alternative energy, more affordable rates, and sensible regulation on matters of clean air and toxic dumping.

FPL’s behavior as corporate citizen has been particularly emblematic of how these legalized monopolies run roughshod over everyday citizens. The company may have sunken $8 million into the failed Amendment 1 initiative in 2016, but the PSC turned around and approved an outrageous $811 million rate hike just months later, despite profits of more than $1.6 billion the previous year. The company has been caught drafting portions of utility related-bills and its parent company, worth nearly $74 billion, paid no federal taxes for eight years, receiving over $313 million in federal tax credits.

The report’s recommendations are pretty much common sense conclusions. Our leaders need to stop allowing utility companies to force their customers to pay for the cost of lobbying that serves to work against their own interest; prohibit campaign contributions from regulated utilities to state candidates and political committees; force the industry to be more transparent in how it spends customer money; and make the PSC more independent from legislators.

The problem, of course, is that the very people who would be able to make such changes have already been bought and paid for by Big Energy and would seem unlikely to be interested in biting the hands that feed them. As in most political pickles of this nature, that challenge can only be solved if voters make the politicians who serve a special interest fear their vote more than they fear the backlash from their paymasters.