COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

What Press Journal columnist, Russ Lemmon, and political activist, Charlie Wilson, have most in common is a single-minded, almost moronic fixation on helping Florida Power & Light acquire Vero Electric, regardless of the cost to the customers of Vero Electric and to the taxpayers of Vero Beach.

Lemmon and his political hero, Wilson, are turning up the heat by making false accusations against Mayor Richard Winger, Vice Mayor Jay Kramer and Councilwoman Amelia Graves.

Wilson and his accomplice at the Press Journal continue to charge Graves, Kramer and Winger with killing the sale, when, in fact, the deal is dead because there simply is no legal means for the City to challenge or abrogate its contractual obligations to its fellow Florida Municipal Power Agency members and to the agency’s bond holders.

If Wilson and Lemmon have their way, the coming city council election will surely be the nastiest in the city’s history. Lemmon and Wilson, along with Glenn Heran, Dr. Stephen Faherty, the Indian River Shores Town Council, the Indian River County Commission and the Scripps editorial board are all allowing themselves to be used by FPL, a company which wants desperately to acquire Vero Beach’s municipal electric utility in a way that will clear a path for future acquisitions of other municipal utilities.

When FPL Vice President Amy Brunjes speaks of her company’s commitment to “finding a path forward” she wants people to believe she is referring to FPL’s desire to sink its teeth into Vero Electric.  More probably, Brunjes is speaking of FPL president and CEO Eric Silagy’s desire to march across Florida in much the way General Sherman marched across Georgia, leaving weakened cities in his wake. The more tenaciously Silagy and his company cling to a purchase and sale agreement which can never be executed, the more obvious it is FPL’s intention has never been to serve the best interests of the people of Vero Beach and the customers of Vero Electric.