COMMENTARY

“In a recent editorial, Scripps addressed the Indian River Shores Town Council’s lawsuit and the Indian River County Commission’s Public Service Commission complaint in a way that would lead the reader to believe the Shores and the County Commission will surely prevail in their assaults on the City.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

MARK SCHUMANN

Regardless of the shifting and now obviously unfavorable terms to the City and its ratepayers, advocates for selling Vero Beach’s municipal electric utility to Florida Power & Light continue to perpetuate the lie that Vero Electric’s rates are, as they say, “exorbitant.”

Perhaps the leading culprit in keeping this lie on life support is the Press Journal, whose publisher, Bob Brunjes, is married to FPL’s Vice President of External Affairs, Amy Brunjes. Through its regular publication of guest columns, commentary by Russ Lemmon, editorials and letters to the editor, the Press Journal seems to be carrying out what amounts to a pro-FPL, pro-sale propaganda campaign.

Not only has Scripps failed to adequately report on Vero Electric’s latest 4.2 percent rate cut, the newspaper makes no effort to help put Vero Electric’s rates in perspective.  Pro-sale fundamentalists — those pushing for the sale regardless of the revelation of tens of millions of dollars in additional costs to ratepayers and to the City — have worked tirelessly, seemingly with the help of the Press Journal, to create the misimpression that Vero Beach’s rates are unreasonable. In truth, Vero Beach’s rate of $123 per 1000 KWH of residential use is below the statewide average for investor-owned, regulated utilities, and is just $2 above the statewide average for municipal utilities. (See Graph Below)

Scripps has also given scant attention to what city leaders are doing to further lower rates, including moving to decommission the power plant and to renegotuate the wholesale power agreement with the Orlando Utilities Commission.

In a recent editorial, Scripps addressed the Indian River Shores Town Council’s lawsuit and the Indian River County Commission’s Public Service Commission complaint is a way that would lead the reader to believe the Shores and the County Commission will surely prevail.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The latest example of Scripps’ willingness to further perpetuate what seems to be nothing more than a big lie, is the letter to the editor published today written by two gentlemen representing of a homeowner’s association.  Their letter read like a Russ Lemmon column, long on assertions disconnected from reality and void of facts.

If these two gentleman will follow the progress of the Indian River County Commission’s petition for a declaratory statement from Florida Public Service Commission, they will soon learn franchise agreements do not supersede service territory assignments; and, importantly, they will come to understand the significance of the fact that neither the Shores nor the County has a franchise agreement with the City allowing them to purchase Vero Beach’s utility infrastructure or to force its removal from the Shores or from the unincorporated areas now served by Vero Electric. These inconvenient, yet important facts, will all be clear by early October.

What the Shores Town Council and County Commission do have going for them is at least the moral support of FPL and an almost juvenile insistence on having their way regardless of the cost to others.

Probably the best the County Commission can hope for is a simple dismissal of its complaint without comment.  The PSC is more likely, though, to offer the County Commission a response making clear that the realities of the utility world are opposite of what they want them to be.  After the PSC rules, likely in early October, don’t be surprised if the Indian River Shores Town Council amends its suit against the Vero Beach, dropping the seriously misguided effort to force the City to removed is utility infrastructure from within the Shores.