BY MARK SCHUMANN
Sourcing a recent Florida Trend magazine article on the proposed sale of Vero Electric to Florida Power & Light, the island weekly quoted Florida Municipal Electric Associating executive director Barry Moline as saying “contagious discontent over rates could spread like wildfire across Florida.”
Nowhere in the Florida Trend article, however, is Moline quoted making any such statement. Further, the island weekly attributed to Moline a direct quote by Vero Beach City Councilman Jay Kramer.
Here are the words the paper put in Moline’s mouth: “Vero Beach is just the first domino to fall, you’re going to start seeing it more and more.”
Coming from a councilman serving a city with a population 15,000, that quote has a quite different meaning than if it had been spoken by the executive director of a state-wide organization in a state with a population of 19 million.
More broadly, the island weekly gave a sympathetic voice to Councilwoman Pilar Turner’s strategy for convincing FMPA’s member cities to agree to fundamental contract changes that would all but gut the organization and render its revenue bonds worthless.
According the island weekly, Turner’s game plan is one she mapped out with the help of utility activist Glenn Heran.
(Ironically, working against the very city Turner serves, Heran met for the umpteenth time today with the South Beach Property Owners Associating. He was there to further foment discontent among the city’s water and sewer customers on the south island. One has to wonder if Turner and Heran will also be allies in Heran’s plan to “relieve” the city of its South Beach water and sewer customers and the utility infrastructure the city built and has maintained there for more than 30 years.)
What neither Heran nor Turner are appreciating is that the kind of changes they are asking FMPA’s member cities to approve are ones that must also be agreed to by FMPA’s bond trustees. By hoping bond trustees will sign off on a deal that increases risk to bond holders, Turner and Heran are not just trying to clear a high hurdle. They are barking up the wrong tree.
Like it or not, Vero Beach joined with other FMPA member cities in pledging revenue from its customer base to service bond debt loaned to the FMPA in good faith. Now Turner and Heran propose to travel the state from Key West to the Panhandle enlightening FMPA’s member cities on the wisdom of weaseling out of their obligations to bond holders.
Reading the island weekly article, headlined “Struggle to terminate old electric contracts now takes to the road,” one might get the impression Heran and Turner have a good chance of sparking a statewide consumer revolt. A closer reading of the Florida Trend article sourced by the island tabloid reveals a different story.
In part, Florida Trend reported:
While the Vero utility’s 34,000 customers are a smidgen compared to FPL’s 4.6 million, acquiring them would represent the biggest annual gain for FPL since 2007.
But picking up any more cities looks unlikely. In Lakeland, three businessmen, Publix Vice Chairman Barney Barnett, economic developer Steve Scruggs and investor Brian Philpot, pitched the idea of changing the city charter to make it easier to sell the utility. (The charter has a high bar: 66% of registered voters.) TECO and FPL expressed interest in buying. But the idea ran into such fierce opposition that the three men dropped it, and Scruggs even apologized.
Lake Worth was going out for bids for wholesale power supply when FPL raised the idea of a sale. It’s gone nowhere. In Jacksonville, city council member Matt Schellenberg proposed last year that the city study a sale but then withdrew his resolution. “I’m still pursuing it,” he says, but he said he must educate the public more.
To read the full Florida Trend article see:
Indian River Guardian 