FPL: Spare us the outrage over contributions

Here we go again. The Orlando Sentinel writes a breathless story about alleged wrongdoing, followed by the Editorial Board opining on the topic, and suddenly we’re all supposed to believe that FPL acted improperly. It’s a sad reality of today’s media climate where repetition and volume drown out objective analysis.

In case you missed the Sentinel’s coverage, allow me to summarize for you: Florida Power and Light executives, while taking part in legal engagements in the American political system, funded nonprofit organizations who then supported issues and candidates (from both parties) that impact the company’s customers and its business. It’s a practice that happens every day across our democratic system, and in fact is our first amendment protected right.

For readers, it’s easy to come away with a different view of the practice and those who partake in it, especially when the Orlando Sentinel intimates that FPL has engaged in wrongdoing with salacious headlines such as, “FPL Execs Tied to ‘Ghost’ Scandal.”

To be clear, we take all allegations seriously, and we told the Sentinel that we have found no evidence that either FPL or our employees had any involvement in, financially supported, or directed any third party to support “ghost” candidates during last year’s Florida election cycle.

The paper’s charge is that FPL is guilty by association because it legally engaged in the political process by contributing to a nonprofit that it wasn’t aware may have been used by others to support questionable activity.

While we can’t speak to the actions of others, we can and will defend our reputation and own our actions. Like many Americans and most companies, FPL participates in the political process because nearly every aspect of our business is impacted by policy decisions at every level of government. We’re one of

Florida’s largest companies and the state’s largest investor and taxpayer, and it’s important for us to be involved and to be a leader on issues that affect our customers, employees, company and our state.

The Orlando Sentinel must understand how perfectly legal and smart it is to engage in policies that impact your business. After all, a bill currently sits before Congress that includes $1.7 billion in support for news organizations, a carveout allegedly aided by three separate consulting firms funded by special interests. Who hired these groups to fund local journalism?

We can’t say for sure, but we’ll let smart people like the readers of the Orlando Sentinel figure that one out.

Once again, you never have to look very far to find hypocritical reporting about FPL. We get it.

We’re an easy target as the state’s largest utility who is involved at all levels of government but, please, stop the hypocrisy.

You can hate the system, but stop hating a participant who complies with the law and day in, day out, provides 11+ million Floridians with the nation’s best reliability, bills that are among the lowest in America and has one of the country’s cleanest generating portfolios.

David P. Reuter is the chief communications officer for Florida Power and Light.