COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

Not content to let Chairman Peter O’Bryan represent the Indian River County Commission, Commissioner Bob Solari recently sent his own letter to Gov. Rick Scott on County stationary. Solari and O’Bryan both wrote Gov. Scott, urging him to approve a $200,000 line item in the state budget intended to pay for an audit of the Florida Municipal Power Agency.

O’Bryan’s letter was tempered.  Solari’s was not.  “There is presently a willing buyer and a willing seller.  Unfortunately an opaque bureaucracy, the Florida Municipal Power Agency (FMPA), has stepped in between the buyer and seller to block the transaction,” Solari wrote.

Either Solari does not understand the truth, or he is inclined to twist facts beyond recognition to make his case.  Solari may claim the FMPA has “stepped in…to block the transaction,” but the truth is the City’s contracts with the FMPA, already validated by the Florida Supreme Court, have been in place for decades.

Solari is clearly spending too much time power walking with Glenn Heran. They, along with other pro-sale fundamentalists, including the local Taxpayers Association and Tea Party, seek to force the City to hand over its electric system at any cost, all in the name of “limited government.”  This crowd of pro-sale, free-market fundamentalists must be operating in a revival tent turned echo chamber, for there misinformation resounds so loudly the truth cannot be heard.

Heran has been assisting the County Commission in its lobbying efforts to force the FMPA to alter its membership contracts.  Heran, the former president of the Taxpayers Association, has also served as a volunteer political operative for FPL.  There is no other way to describe Heran’s role in heading up at least two local political campaigns funded almost entirely with FPL money.

More recently, Heran persuaded the County Commission to hire The Ballard Group, a high-powered, high-priced lobbying firm, to push through utility legislation sponsored by State Rep. Debbie Mayfield.  Like most of Mayfield’s proposed legislation, the utility bills, all designed in one way or another to force the City of Vero Beach out of the utility business, never made it to the floor of the House or the Senate.

The Ballard Group, which also represents Florida Power & Light, was successful in persuading the Senate Budget Committee to slip $200,000 in the budget at the close of the legislative session to pay for an audit of the FMPA.  The bill did not specifically reference the FMPA, but rather called for an audit of utilities operating under Florida Statute 361.10, a statute also known as the Joint Power Act.

The line item could be vetoed by Gov. Scott, though a spokesman for the FMPA said the agency is not seeking a veto and is prepared to cooperate fully with the Auditor General’s Office.

However, according to a spokesman for the Auditor General’s Office, the agency is still determining if the bill would require an audit of all utilities operating under statute 361.10.  Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy, the Seminole Electric Cooperative, the FMPA and its member utilities all operate joint power projects under statute 361.10.  Unfortunately for the Auditor General, $200,000 won’t begin to cover the cost of auditing every utility covered by the Joint Power Act.

If it is determined the bill will require an audit of utilities other than the FMPA, include FPL, the state’s largest utility will surely urge Gov. Scott to veto the very piece of legislating it earlier supported.  You can’t make this up!

Beyond pushing for an audit of the FMPA, which is already audited annually, Solari and Heran seem to have joined activist Charlie Wilson in embracing the misguided notion that the next logical step in forcing the sale of Vero Electric is to take the FMPA to court.

“What would you do for a Klondike Bar?  What would you do for a sale?,” Wilson recently asked the members of the City Council, as he urged them to joint the County in fighting the FMPA.

Wilson seems set on making his call for a legal battle with the FMPA the central issue in the November City Council election. For his part, Wilson has picked up papers to be submitted with the City Clerk’s office, should he decide to run.  If Wilson does run for one of three seats to be filled in Nov., it will be his second try.  Wilson was elected to the City Council in Nov., 2009, but was removed from office one month later, when a judge ruled Wilson had failed to meet the residency requirement for Council candidates.

Wilson hopes for a Council of at least three members willing to commit millions of dollars in a long legal fight that will almost surely end in defeat.  As City Attorney Wayne Coment explained to Wilson recently, the FMPA’s contracts have already been validated by the Florida Supreme Court. If there is a case to be made against the FMPA, it would be on the grounds the agency is in breach of valid contracts.  Even the City’s transactional attorney, John Igoe, clearly frustrated in his dealing with the FMPA, has never said the agency is in breach of contract.

To take the FMPA to court without a a strong legal argument would be about as foolish as signing a sales contract without a clear path forward to a closing.

Has anyone heard from the Press Journal?

The editors of Press Journal, which have faithfully supported the sale of Vero Electric to FPL down ever bumpy stretch and around ever twist and turn in what now appears to be a dead end road, have yet to report on the City Council’s decision to cut electric rates another 4.2 percent effective June 1.  If the Council had instead approved a 4.2 percent rate increase at its meeting Tuesday evening, you can rest assured the banner headline across the front paper of the Wednesday Press Journal would have blasted the bad news far and wide.  In fact, every time the troika of Tracy Carroll, Craig Fletcher and Pilar Turner jacked up electric rates, the Press Journal was there to report the news in a way that would support the sale.

In addition to not reporting Vero Beach’s recent electric rate reductions, the Press Journal has remained silent on the City’s plans to hire a consultant to help conduct a thorough rate review and a system optimization study.  None of this news supports the “newspaper’s” long-held editorial position that the City should sell its electric system to FPL. The Press Journal’s editorial board has maintained this position, despite altered terms that are now far less favorable to the City and its taxpayers.

Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, which publishes the Press Journal, is headed by Publisher Bob Brunjes, the husband of FPL’s Vice President of External Affairs, Amy Brunjes.