Thanks to FPL’s dirty politics, paying the light bill is more nauseating than ever
Welcome to Florida, where even the electricity you consume comes with a side of dirty, secretive — and most likely, illegal — political gangsterism.
It’s one thing for a monopoly like Florida Power & Light to lobby lawmakers to obtain favorable policies for its business — and quite another to make a mockery of our supposedly democratic political system.
That’s what the nation’s largest electric utility tried to do through a hired political consultant in a 2018 MiamiDade County Commission race, taking possibly illegal action to change the outcome, according to leaked documents obtained by the Miami Herald.
Had FPL and political consultant Jeff Pitts succeeded, they would have derailed the political career of now MiamiDade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava — a competent, compassionate leader who is the best thing to happen to county government in a long time.
Levine Cava’s crime in FPL’s eyes? She cares for the environment and was — and remains — a vigilant, vocal watchdog of FPL’s Turkey Point nuclear plant in South Dade.
For her concern that people not drink contaminated water or turn into toast, Pitts funneled undisclosed funds, which is against the law, to prop up an unknown Democratic competitor, Johnathan Burke, to siphon off votes from Levine Cava in the District 8 commission race.
Of course, Levine Cava was hardly alone on the company’s hit list.
A trail of leaked records shows that the company tried to take out political contenders, opponents and a handful of inconvenient investigative journalists across the state whose job is to unravel the shenanigans behind the profitable industry of delivering power to Floridians.
Wrongdoing by FPL during elections in other parts of the state, including Seminole, Volusia and Duval counties, has been recently reported, in addition to the Miami Herald, by the Orlando Sentinel and The Florida TimesUnion.
In all cases, the company used the same pit bull of a political consultant, Pitts, former CEO of Matrix LLC, now in a fight with Joe Perkins, founder of the Alabama-based firm, which lobbies for electric companies all over the South.
ELIMINATING A PRO-SOLAR SENATOR
FPL also went after — and succeeded in eliminating — another public servant working on behalf of the public’s interest, former state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez, after the Miami Democrat proposed legislation to expand rooftop solar power that cut into company profits.
FPL wants no independent vendors of solar, as Rodríguez proposed in 2019. It is seeking to monopolize solar power as it does electricity along most of the east coast of Florida, the agricultural southern and eastern Lake Okeechobee, the lower west coast and parts of central, north central, and northwest Florida.
“JJR at it again. I want you to make his life a living hell . . . seriously,” FPL CEO Eric Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of his company vice presidents.
His wish was delegated to Pitts (now in a war with Matrix founder Perkins) — and the LLC-funded political committees that paid for advertisements for the sham candidate with the same last name, Rodríguez, allegedly recruited by disgraced former legislator Frank Artiles.
Former Sen. Rodríguez, nominated by President Biden to become assistant secretary for employment and training at the Department of Labor, lost the election by a handful of votes to a neophyte Republican who embarrassed herself several times during culture-war debates last legislative season.
In other words, the voters of Miami’s Senate District 37 — confused by a barrage of FPL-funded ads delivered via Matrix — lost a capable senator and are now represented by a person who can hardly verbalize coherent thoughts.
Voters, you were fooled by FPL as much as you were by the Republican
Party behind him.
SURVEILLANCE OF JOURNALISTS
Another FPL-funded tactic is to launch underhanded attacks against reporters investigating its operational shenanigans and influence peddling.
The company launched a website dedicated to attacking the Miami Herald’s respected Tallahassee bureau chief Mary Ellen Klas and accusing her of “anti-utility bias” for doing her job exceptionally well. And it took over a Florida news site, The Capitolist, and used it to discredit critics.
Most famously, while working for FPL, Pitts had employees follow and photograph the private life of Times-Union metro columnist Nate Monroe, whose investigative work doomed the privatization of community-owned Jacksonville electric provider, JEA — and exposed the corruption behind the attempted sale.
FPL denied ordering the “hit,” but Pitts emailed the surveillance report on Monroe to FPL’s vice president of state legislative affairs in October 2019. It included a photo of the journalist and his then-girlfriend, now wife and mother of his child, walking their dog on Neptune Beach.
FPL’S DARK MONEY
FPL, through Pitts and the firm he worked for, sought to destroy people FPL viewed as enemies. Dogged reporting has brought into the limelight the role dark money plays in Florida government.
Like any other industry or registered individual, FPL has the right to lobby lawmakers seeking favorable decisions. And it has the right to fund — legally — political office-seekers.
But it doesn’t have the right to thwart fair elections, as it has done through its consultants, by pouring millions secretly into political races since 2018, as the paper trail shows.
So thanks to FPL’s delinquent politics, paying the light bill is now more nauseating than ever.
Here’s the only way to stop the scoundrels: Vote armed with information about candidates, and ask questions about where they stand on solar power. FPL wants to constrict the state’s growing rooftop solar industry.
Vote for competition, not to perpetuate a monopoly with unbridled power to pocket $1 billion in tax cuts — and raise our rates with the blessing of Florida’s Public Service Commission.
Competition — and open government elected by the people, not the dollars of a few — is supposed to be the American way.
Fabiola Santiago: 305-376-3469, @fabiolasantiago