COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

One could make a full time job out of cleaning up Charlie Wilson’s Tuesday baloney droppings, but who has time to follow Wilson around town with a broom and dust pan?

One Wilson dropping today, though, is worth noting and correcting

Attempting to further Tracy Carroll’s campaign, Wilson argued, both on the radio this morning and before the City Council,  that if he were a member of a three-person Council majority he could find a way out of the purchase and sale agreement between the City and Florida Power & Light.  Is this the same brilliant legal mind that thought he had discovered a way around the the City’s residency requirement for Council candidates?

Wilson said he would kill the deal by “defunding” the transactional attorneys and demanding that no City employee travel to any meeting in favor of the sale of Vero Electric, “at which time,” Wilson said,  “when the federal government met to consider Vero Beach’s petition, or when Vero Beach had to go before the Public Service Commission they would have no representation. No one would be there to testify on Vero Beach’s behalf.”

This kind of illogic can only be described as purse nonsense – political baloney.  For the Council to fail to engage competent transactional attorneys to conclude the sale, or to refuse to make a good faith effort to secure third party approvals, such as from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Florida Public Service Commission, would be to breach the City’s contract with FPL, leaving FPL every legal recourse to force the City to fulfill its contractual obligations to conclude the sale.

Everyone should be clear about this:  For the sale to be concluded, approvals must be secured from the Florida Municipal Power Agency, the FERC and the PSC.  But anyone insisting the City Council still has the authority or the power to “kill” the deal is either intentionally misleading the public or is disconnected from realiy.