South Carolina ‘Conservative Coalition’ Presses for Santee Cooper Sale

You would think that a “conservative coalition” would not be needed to convince Republican lawmakers in one of America’s reddest states that the government should not be in the power generation business. Unfortunately, this is south carolina … Where so-called “republican” lawmakers are fighting tooth and nail to keep the state of Palmetto under the control of an anti-competitive albatross known as Santee Cooper.

For those new to this debate, Santee Cooper is a state-owned company that currently has billions of dollars in debt after its primary role in the sloppy construction of two abandoned nuclear reactors in Jenkinsville, SC

For years, the agency deceived the public (and its bondholders) about the true status of these reactors – all so that it could continue to raise customer fees to subsidize its construction.

Surprisingly, when the mistake was finally exposed, the dealership rewarded its former chief executive with a $ 16 million golden parachute financed by the taxpayer.

Unreal, right?

Unfortunately, not in South Carolina … as this is the kind of failure that state lawmakers routinely reward. Like a “Kick Me” sign with lots of zeros behind it.

Anyway, our founding editor Will Folks baptized this scandal “NukeGate”- and documented how it restored the state more than $ 10 billion (and telling). He also continued to push for the agency’s privatization – something he proposed to do more than thirteen years ago.

If lawmakers had heard it at the time, there would have been no NukeGate – just unexpected multi-billion dollar money.

Despite its history of dysfunction and dishonesty, Santee Cooper and his apologists continue to claim that the agency can “reform”. However, as we pointed out last week, all the ways to achieve the cost savings promised as part of this “reform” plan have collapsed.

Which means that the utility company is bound to produce expensive and environmentally hostile energy in its anti-competitive monopoly and maintained by the government …

Seriously, though … take all politics and ideological considerations out of the equation. Math just doesn’t match.

In fact, things are looking so bad Santee Cooper recently embarked on another unauthorized debt escalation – and warned last month that more accumulation of unauthorized debt was on the way.

As we said … an albatross.

This week, the aforementioned “conservative coalition” supported the transfer of Santee Cooper to the private sector.

According to a press release, the SC Club for Growth, Faith Wins, a SC Taxpayers Association and the Palmetto Promise Institute they are collectively pushing lawmakers to “sell Santee Cooper”, which they have described (correctly) as a “highly indebted and poorly managed state agency”.

“True reform of the state-run and government-operated concessionaire is impossible … just one sale will give Santee Cooper and cooperative taxpayers relief from the billions in debt of the VC Summer nuclear disaster and take our government out of the concessionaire business,” the observed group at its launch (.pdf).

The main argument of the coalition? An attractive one – that is, that Santee Cooper cannot help but drown in the rising tide of red paint.

“No matter how you message it, no reform is going to take care of Santee Cooper’s debt,” noted the group. “Almost all state agencies and private companies have debts, but Santee Cooper is different, since the only source of payment for this debt is its direct service customers and the customers of the cooperatives that Santee Cooper serves. They carry the full weight of Santee Cooper’s $ 6.8 billion errors, including $ 4 billion for a semi-finished nuclear power plant that will never generate electricity. This is totally wrong. “

In fact …

The group also aimed at a “reform” bill advocated by Santee Cooper’s top legislative apologist and one of the architects of the NukeGate disaster – Luke Rankin.

“Under the current reform project, Santee Cooper will remain a self-regulated state agency with no means of supervision,” said the group. “Any type of reform maintains Santee Cooper as a state agency operated by bureaucrats. We believe in limited government, it is time to act as such and sell Santee Cooper to private industry. “

It’s actually past it happened … South Carolina lawmakers should have sold Santee Cooper before they have accumulated unscrupulous, unsustainable and insoluble debt.

Last February, based in Florida NextEra Energy presented the main offer to buy Santee Cooper – agreeing to pay off its mountain of debt. According to the company’s executive director, Jim Robo, a $ 9.6 billion offer would provide “the immediate elimination of all existing Santee Cooper debts, billions of dollars in new investments in clean energy generation across the state of South Carolina, hundreds of millions of dollars in additional repayments to Santee Cooper customers in the first year, hundreds of millions of dollars to be remitted as general revenues to the state and billions of dollars in new state and local taxes. “

Is this offer perfect? No. Of course, NextEra signaled a willingness to continue negotiating … which is undoubtedly a scenario that Rankin and other Santee Cooper supporters are eager to avoid.

Whatever you think about NextEra’s proposal, however, one thing is clear: the longer South Carolina waits to get rid of this “dishonest agency”, the more damage it will do to taxpayers and taxpayers across the state.

-FITSNews

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