Editor’s Note: More than once, Florida Power & Light’s External Affairs Manager, Amy Brunjes, has gone before the City Council and directly accused Councilman Jay Kramer of obstructing FPL’s efforts to acquire Vero Beach’s electric system.  Personally attacking Kramer gives Brunjes no pause, but the word on the street is that she considers any correction of her misstatements before the council as unnecessarily personal.  The following story was first posted March 4.

COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

When asked today how the power deal keeps getting better for the OUC, the FMPA and FPL, Mayor Richard Winger offered a number of examples, including the shifting price FPL says it will have to pay to resolve the short term power issue.  That number is down from $30 million to $26 million, though FPL External Affairs Manager, Amy Brunjes, did her best today to put a masterful spin on the truth.

Brunjes claimed the $30 million premium FPL was to have paid the OUC to buy Vero Beach’s power entitlements for three years would actually have brought value to the company, as compared to the $26 million FPL now proposes to pay the FMPA.  There is no delicate way to put this. Brunjes’ statement before the city council today is simply not true, at least not if what voters were told last spring is true.

At the time voters were asked to approve the sale, FPL claimed it would cost $30 million more to buy Vero Beach’s FMPA power entitlement from the OUC for three years than it would cost the company to generate the power at one of its own plants. The $30 million was, then, included as an itemized component of FPL’s  $179 million offer for Vero Electric. Now Brunjes is telling us that is not so.  This isn’t the first time FPL spokespersons have practiced the fine art of speaking out of both sides of their mouth.  When Vero Beach leaders were deciding whether to seek voter approval for the power purchase agreement, Brunjes said, “This is not a decision you want to trust to Joe Six Pack.”

How patrician of her!

At the same time Brunjes and her FPL colleagues were working to dissuade leaders in Vero Beach from holding a referendum, they were spending, literally, hundreds of thousands of dollars in South Daytona on a petition drive to force a referendum there.  Why the difference?  Vero Beach is planning to sell its electric utility to FPL.  In contrast, South Daytona leaders were attempting to exercise their right to buy back their electric system from FPL.

Whenever FPL’s “external affairs” specialists speak, I cannot help but be reminded of an episode from the comedy series, “The Simpsons.”  Anglers were catching two-headed fish near the nuclear power plant where Homer Simpson worked.  At a hastily called press conference, one of the power company’s “eternal affairs” specialists said, “Hey, aren’t two heads better than one?”

It is time for Brunjes and her FPL colleagues to stop playing loose with the facts, and start leveling with the people of Vero Beach.  They have either taken $4 million off the table, or they haven’t.