…inland weekly continues to slant its reporting in favor of the Shores

COMMENTARY

“County Commissioners now fear the PSC ruling will not be in their favor. They didn’t want that bad news reported in advance of the Vero Beach City Council election Nov. 4, not while candidates Harry Howle III, Pilar Turner and Charlie Wilson are continuing to attempt to persuade voters a sale to FPL is still possible.”

MARK SCHUMANN

When Vero Beach and Indian River Shores officials and their attorneys gather today for a conflict assessment meeting, perhaps the proceedings should open with Shores attorney Bruce May reading the legal brief he submitted to the Florida Public Service Commission April 14 on behalf of the Lee County Electric Cooperative. (See: Indian River Shores attorney working both sides of the fence)

After presenting his earlier reasoning for why municipal franchise agreements are subordinate to PSC-approved  service territory assignments, May could then explain for his clients, and for the public, why he is now representing the Shores in making essentially the opposite argument.

May’s newest position on this legal question, which was probably born out of the prospect of handling a lawsuit that will be lucrative for him and his firm, was presented without critique by the island weekly in a story published last week.

If there remains even one person in all of Vero Beach who believes the island weekly newspaper, Vero Beach 32963, has any inclination to tell more than one side of the power sale story, they need only read reporter Lisa Zahner’s latest “news” story published last week and posted on VeroNews.com. (See: Shores electric lawsuit: About home rule – or money?)

Joining the “Stuart” Press-Journal in its support of the Shores’ legal action against Vero Beach, Zahner served up another one of her commentaries thinly disguised as a news story. Nowhere in Zahner’s story does she explain to her readers the argument she is making for May is one he, himself, contradicted in a brief filed with the PSC earlier this year.

Zahner and her editors, along with other pro-sale advocates, continue to claim Vero Electric’s rates are some 30 percent higher than FPL. They carefully avoid explaining that FPL’s rates are now only 17 percent less than Vero Electric. By continuing to offer a meaningless comparison, they must hope to fix the minds of the public an exaggerated notion of the savings possible by switching from Vero Electric to Florida Power & Light.

Zahner and her editors, and May and his clients, could all stand to buy and read a copy of “Simple Math for Dummies.” One-thousand is 100 percent greater than 500, and 500 is 50 percent less than 1000. If these numbers represented hypothetical bills for an Indian River Shores customer, would Zahner and her editors conclude the FPL reduction provides a savings of 100 percent, leading to electric charges of zero?

The bottom line is FPL’s rates are now 17 percent less than Vero Electric. Period. If Vero Beach can, as city leaders believe, reduce costs by renegotiating the wholesale power agreement with the Orlando Utilities Commission, decommissioning the power plant and further optimizing utility operations, the rate differential could drop to 10 percent or less.

On behalf of his clients, May also argues Vero Beach owes the Shores and its residents a refund for overcharges since 2008. This is, quite frankly, pure nonsense. Business decisions made in 2008 based on information available at the time do not translate into mismanagement, as May and his clients claim.

As Vero Beach attorney Schef Write has explained, when the city negotiated its wholesale power contract with the OUC, no one could have anticipated the coming Great Recession, or the drastic drop in the price of natural gas. It is simply absurd for May to suggest, on behalf of the Shores Town Council, that any utility (ENRON excepted) is willingly deceitful, mismanages finances and seeks not to serve its customers.

Zahner and her editors also failed to report that, playing politics, the Indian River County Commission maneuvered to delay the PSC’s response to the Commission’s request for a declaratory ruling on what amounts to the same argument May proposed to present in circuit court on behalf of the Shores.

County Commissioners now fear the PSC ruling will not be in their favor. They didn’t want that bad news reported in advance of the Vero Beach City Council election Nov. 4, not while candidates Harry Howle III, Pilar Turner and Charlie Wilson are continuing to attempt to persuade voters a sale to FPL is still possible.

What they don’t want Vero Beach voters to know is that the deal is dead, though not yet buried.