Is FPL becoming the Facebook of Florida?
For years, I considered Florida Power & Light to be a well- run but greedy company.
But I was wrong.
Florida Power & Light is a wellrun but ruthless company.
Revelations in the Orlando Sentinel show that the company no longer satisfies itself with controlling Florida’s utility regulation system. FPL wants to control Florida.
The Sentinel reported that FPL executives worked with political operatives to run “ghost candidates” last year in three state Senate races. The goal was to defeat Democrats by confusing voters.
Example: In District 37, the Democrat was Jose Javier Rodriguez. The ghost was independent Alex Rodriguez, who got almost 6,400 votes. Jose Javier Rodriguez lost to the Republican by 32 votes.
In addition, the Sentinel reported that an FPL- financed consultant offered a mystery, $ 250,000- per- year job to a member of the Jacksonville City Council — if he resigned. The councilman opposed selling Jacksonville’s electric utility to FPL, which had offered $ 11 billion.
FPL denies any direct involvement in the attempts to subvert democracy and remove an obstacle to the company’s deal. The Sentinel’s reporting, a company spokesman said, presented an “incomplete picture.”
Yet the revelations align with FPL’s actions since losing a major rate case in January 2010. Six months after the Public Service Commission reduced FPL’s request from $ 1.3 billion to $ 75 million, four of the five commissioners were gone.
The Florida Senate first refused to confirm David Klement and Benjamin Stevens. They had voted while awaiting confirmation. Klement’s obituary said FPL conducted a “smear campaign” against the men.
Two months later, the Public Service Commission Nominating Council rejected the applications of Nancy Argenziano and Nathan Skop for another term. The panel regularly had sent names of incumbents to the governor.
FPL’s next rate case came in December 2012. Appointments of all five commissioners had gone through then- Gov. Rick Scott. FPL had donated $ 250,000 to Scott’s campaign. FPL got what the company wanted. Over the last nine years, FPL has suffered only one minor loss before the commission.
Recalling the days of the Pork Chop Gang
From the 1930s into the 1960s, the most powerful person in Florida was Ed Ball. He was not a politician. He owned politicians.
Through the trust of Alfred I. DuPont, his brother- in- law, Ball came to control the Florida East Coast Railway, Florida National Bank — now part of Wells Fargo — and timber industry giant St. Joe Paper. Ball also controlled the Florida Legislature. Doing so was easier then. Ball had to control only the rural, Panhandle “Pork Chop Gang,” which opposed integration and any form of progressive government.
In the late 1960s, redistricting and the new demographics of a growing Florida broke up the “Pork Chop Gang” and Ball’s power. Half a century later, the closest entity to Ed Ball is Florida Power & Light.
The company is a behemoth owned by a behemoth. FPL, with 11 million customers, calls itself the largest utility in the United States, based on electricity generated and sold. Parent company NextEra Energy, based in Juno Beach, is the largest utility company in the world.
Florida benefits from those economies of scale. Critics dispute FPL’s claims that its bills are the lowest in the country, but they are low by industry standards. Service is generally reliable. But FPL increasingly has taken on the personality of Big Tech: We do good, so we deserve to do as well as possible by whatever means.