COMMENTARY

MARK SCHUMANN

The recent attempt by a Florida Power & Light ally to unseat the mayor of Newberry may suggest the battle to topple the Florida Municipal Power Agency, and to end municipal power in Florida, may be moving from the Florida Legislature to city halls across the state. Former Florida House Rep. Debbie Boyd, Newberry, confirmed today that Vero Beach utility activist and political operative, Charlie Wilson, recently urged her to challenge Newberry’s incumbent mayor, Bill Conrad. Conrad is Chairman of the FMPA. Boyd said Wilson told her he and others were interested in supporting a candidate who could defeat Conrad. Today, Newberry City Clerk Judy Rice confirmed Wilson emailed her and placed a call on March 16 to find out if Boyd had entered the race. Despite Wilson’s offer of support, Boyd declined to challenge Conrad. Though his attempt to unseat the chairman of the FMPA came to naught, Wilson’s effort may explain why he and other FPL allies are calling for an FMPA board of directors made up largely of elected officials from the agency’s member cities. Despite its significant lobbying efforts, FPL has been unable to persuade the Florida Legislature to intervene to force the sale of Vero Electric. As a next step in dismantling the FMPA, the utility giant seems ready to use its considerable political and financial might to control the outcome of municipal elections in FMPA cities. If the FMPA board can be stacked with officials beholden, not to their constituents, but to FPL, then the state’s largest investor owned utility may have a chance of expanding its customer base and its revenues by acquiring municipal utilities. Given public statements by FPL President Eric Silagy, the strategy seems plausible enough. Speaking at an investor conference in March 2013, Silagy said, “One of the things that’s happened is I’ve now got the governor of Florida going around to the munis saying, ‘Why aren’t you selling yourself to FPL?’ which of course, you can imagine, I’m flattered, but at the same time, I get some folks in the munis who say, ‘That’s really not helpful.’ But I can’t help it. But it’s because he’s trying to drive more cost competitiveness into the state and he sees that’s a really great way to do it.” If the suggestion that FPL would recruit and sponsor candidates in local elections seems far fetched, consider the ways the utility giant has flexed its muscle to control local politics in South Daytona Beach and in Vero Beach, not to mention the company’s success in persuading the Florida Legislature to sack two Public Service Commission members who refused to approve FPL’s request for a $1 billion rate increase. To hold on to 7000 customers, FPL spent nearly $500,000 changing South Daytona’s city charter and then defeating a referendum on the city’s proposed buy-back of its electric system. At the same time, FPL spent hundreds of thousand of dollars supporting two referendums on the company’s proposed purchase of Vero Electric. Ironically, FPL representatives discouraged the holding of a referendum in Vero Beach, while they formed and funded a political action group to force a referendum in South Daytona. Just months before lobbying State Sen. Joe Negron to slip $200,000 in the state budget in the waning hours of the 2014 Legislature to pay for an audit of the FMPA, the fine folks from Juno Beach contributed $50,000 to Negron’s political action committee. Where money can make the difference, where character does not count, FPL seems to get what it wants. Wilson may fancy himself a brilliant political strategist in the mold of Carl Rove, but in reality he seems to be little more than a puppet for the state’s largest investor-owned utility.