Board rebuffs call to audit FPL ties to ‘ghost’ scandal
A state board recently rebuffed a request from several Democratic lawmakers for an audit of Florida Power & Light’s finances, which the representatives sought following reports linking the utility’s executives to figures in the state’s “ghost” candidate scandal.
The lawmakers — Orlando-area state Reps. Anna Eskamani, Carlos Guillermo Smith and Travaris McCurdy and Rep. Angie Nixon, of Duval County — on Monday sent a renewed request to the Public Service Commission, which regulates private utility companies in Florida.
In their initial request, the lawmakers cited reporting by the Orlando Sentinel that showed the political operatives involved in promoting apparent spoiler candidates in three key 2020 state Senate elections had worked closely with FPL executives, including CEO Eric Silagy.
The reporting also showed FPL donated millions in recent years to entities controlled by consultants with Alabama-based firm Matrix LLC, who also billed the utility for more than $3 million days before they began moving money through the entity central to the scandal, Grow United Inc.
“FPL ratepayers deserve to know whether the money they are forced to send the utility every month to pay their bills was used not only to influence elections, but also to undermine democracy through fake candidate schemes,” the Democrats’ Jan. 5 letter to the PSC said.
The state board’s chair, Andrew G. Fay, responded in a letter dated the following day, offering the commission’s “categorical assurances” regarding the lawmakers’ concerns.
Fay wrote that FPL had already been subjected to audits after seeking approval to increase customers’ rates in March 2021: “These audits are precisely focused on the heart of your concerns — to detect any use of ratepayer funds that do not reasonably relate to the provision of service by a regulated utility company in Florida.”
Those audits, he wrote, “produced no evidence that Florida Power and Light used, or was intending to use, ratepayer funds for the private benefit of the company’s lobbying, campaigning, and or marketing affairs.”
However, in a response Monday, Eskamani, Smith, McCurdy and Nixon, wrote that news reports about FPL’s political activities “have raised significant concerns” about the “comprehensiveness and results” of those audits.
“While we appreciate the audits that are done as part of the rate case proceeding, given the events that have taken place over the last year, it is in the best interest of Floridians to provide further transparency and answer outstanding questions about FPL’s political spending,” they wrote.
FPL has repeatedly denied that anyone at the company was involved in the spoiler candidate scheme and said it has found no evidence of wrongdoing by its employees. In a statement Monday, FPL spokesperson David Reuter said Eskamani was engaged in “political grandstanding.”
“As the PSC explained in their follow-up letter, FPL filed more than 100,000 pages of documents with the Florida Public Service Commission as part of its 2021 rate case filing,” Reuter said. “We have never used FPL customer dollars to participate in the political process or lobby on our company’s behalf, and any accusation that claims this is uninformed and false.”
The “ghost” candidate controversy involves three independent candidates who ran last year in Central and South Florida. They did not campaign but were boosted by an ad blitz promoting them as progressive outsiders.
The mailers were paid for by a pair of political committees set up by a then-GOP consultant and funded by Grow United, a darkmoney nonprofit controlled by operatives who at the time worked for Matrix LLC, a political consulting that worked at the time for FPL.
Miami-Dade prosecutors have arrested one of the independents, Alex Rodriguez, who ran in Miami’s District 37, on charges that he was bribed by former state lawmaker Frank Artiles in an apparent attempt to siphon votes away from the race’s Democratic incumbent.
The Republican won that race by 32 votes, while Rodriguez drew thousands. He has since pleaded guilty to felony charges. Artiles has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. No one else has been charged or accused of wrongdoing in the scheme, though the investigation is ongoing.
Recent court filings in the Artiles case revealed that prosecutors have informed several figures in the scandal they are potentially facing charges, including Richard Alexander, the Cullman, Ala., man who was listed as chairman for Grow United and whose sister worked for Matrix in 2020.
Another target of prosecutors is “Let’s Preserve the American Dream,” a dark-money nonprofit with close ties to Associated Industries of Florida, the state’s largest business lobbying group whose donors include FPL.
The nonprofit was included in a secret spending plan that was sent to a pseudonymous email address for Silagy by Matrix operatives in 2019, which laid out how FPL money could be filtered through it and other entities to conceal political spending, the Sentinel has reported.
It’s unclear if the plan was ever utilized.