Florida’s biggest utilities shell out big bucks for political sway
Florida’s four largest energy companies are spending beaucoup bucks on campaigns and lobbying, all to gain political influence that they hope will result in regulatory decisions that favor their investors over you, their customers.
In a report released last month, Integrity Florida examined the political spending by Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy, TECO Energy and Gulf Power in the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, while also looking at ways the utilities attempt to influence legislation and regulators through lobbying expenditures.
These electric-utility monopolies gave statelevel candidates, political parties and committees more than $43 million. That’s a lot of money even considering Florida’s reputation for unregulated, highstakes campaign spending. The utilities spent more than twice as much on political contributions during that four-year period than they spent during the prior 10-years from 2002 to 2012, covering five election cycles.
From 2014 through 2017, the utilities spent more than $6 million on lobbyists to represent them before the Florida Legislature. The power companies employ an army of 90 to 100 legislative contract lobbyists each year, a significant number for four companies when you consider the Florida Legislature has 160 members. That’s more than one lobbyist for every two legislators.
These results are documented in Integrity Florida’s research reports, first “Power Play: Political Influence of Florida’s Top Energy Corporations” released in 2014 and now “Power Play Redux,” released last month.
Why should you care what these energy companies are spending to influence rate regulation and public policy?
Florida’s largest electric utilities have more than 7 million customers in the state, earning approximately $17 billion in total revenue each year. The largest state utility, Florida Power & Light, is a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, the world’s largest utility company.
The Florida Public Service Commission is the state regulatory body charged with determining whether these monopoly investor-owned companies are charging their customers fair rates while also allowing reasonable profits. The governor and the Florida Legislature exercise considerable influence on the PSC through the nomination and appointment process. The utilities regulated by the PSC have a high degree of influence on the governor and the Legislature through political contributions and lobbying and have used that influence to pursue favorable regulatory decisions by the PSC, at the expense of the public. The result is a regulatory agency that has been “captured” by the industries it regulates.
It’s important to single out these energy companies for scrutiny because of their status as monopolies and the unique regulatory nature of the PSC.
But really, the findings in the Integrity Florida report are just an example of a much larger problem. The corrupting influence of money in politics is the defining issue of our time because it is so pervasive. It permeates and shapes all public policy and not in a good way. We need leaders who recognize the problem and have the political will to do something about it.