With SC House leaders pressing to negotiate the sale of Santee Cooper to NextEra and Senate leaders signaling that they may be interested in unloading the state utility despite huge problems with the initial proposal, it’s nice to see a handful of senators working to make sure we know more about NextEra’s lobbying campaign.
The Post and Courier’s Avery Wilks reports that a special Senate Judiciary subcommittee plans to request NextEra for communications between its lobbyists and state legislators, a list of campaign donations from NextEra and its employees, direct and indirect payments to state legislators and companies with which they are associated with and any other expenses in South Carolina, including efforts to build public support for the business by paying political bloggers, business groups and social media influencers. The order dates back to the July 2017 decision by Santee Cooper and the now defunct SCE & G to abandon work on the $ 9 billion VC Summer nuclear expansion project.
So far, Santee Cooper’s defenders have behaved primarily as obstructionists – working to block not only efforts to sell public service, but even efforts to reform an autonomous and often arrogant state agency by placing their own interests above those of state taxpayers or taxpayers themselves. But this latest effort, while still designed to prevent a sale, can help the legislature make the best decision about a sale and also improve the way our state regulates monopolies.
Note that senators had to specifically request the information – and threaten to intimidate them if NextEra does not comply.
This should remind us that, although state law requires lawmakers to report the sources of their revenues and requires companies to report their campaign donations and lobbying activities, these laws have huge gaps that allow companies to obscure the scope of their efforts to convince lawmakers to donate them the benefit of the doubt. And even without the loopholes, these laws are unlikely to capture all the efforts that the interests of wealthy funds make to become dear to lawmakers.
Based on NextEra’s initial offer, it seems doubtful that lawmakers can design a sale that really benefits Santee Cooper’s customers and our state, rather than simply satisfying philosophical desires to take the state out of the utility business.
Still, we expect lawmakers to persist in their courtship with NextEra at least long enough for the dealership to comply with requests; it is likely to be surprising to see how far public service has gone to make it easier for individual lawmakers to feel its friendly presence, but difficult for the public to measure.
We hope it will also serve to remind lawmakers how valuable it is to own a monopoly electric utility in South Carolina – essentially a license to print money – and get them to impose long-awaited restrictions on how these companies insinuate themselves. to legislators who decide whether our state will grant companies monopoly status, and how profitable that status can be.
The US Supreme Court has limited the extent to which we can regulate money in politics. But we can impose all kinds of restrictions in exchange for granting monopolies to companies. Therefore, the Legislature can prohibit regulated public services, their executives and affiliated organizations from offering jobs, campaign donations or gifts to lawmakers. This can prohibit them from making donations to dark money organizations. And ban or restrict other activities, depending on what other types of generosity the documents present. And that’s exactly what you need to do, regardless of Santee Cooper’s fate.
These laws would not apply to NextEra unless it bought Santee Cooper, but they would apply to energy Dominion and Duke, who also have every incentive to make state lawmakers feel good about them.
