Florida Power & Light Co. officials tried but failed to keep secret the names of some of those who flew on their corporate jets during a rate hike hearing today.
Public Service Commission Chairman Matthew Carter ordered the Juno Beach-based utility to provide the names of everyone who flew on its private jet over the objections of FPL lawyer John Butler.
The 1,500-page volume of flight logs going back to 2006 revealed that the company spent about $52 million on operation and maintenance for corporate jet flights over the past four years. That includes what they project they will spend for the next three months.
At least two GOP Florida elected officials traveled with FPL executives on the jet, the flight logs showed.
U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, who retired last month, and U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, flew on the plane on separate occasions in 2006.
Taking away charges the company made to its affiliates for the jet travel, FPL still spent between $6.7 million and $9.5 million a year over the past four years, the records show.
FPL officials say the planes are necessary for the corporation to conduct its business.
“All the redacted names were those of NextEra/FPL Energy employees whose travel costs were paid for by their company, not Florida Power & Light,” FPL spokesman Mark Bubriski said in an e-mailed statement.
“NextEra/FPL Energy flight data, in addition to not being paid by FPL, is competitively sensitive, and that is why it is redacted. The only information that has been redacted is: 1) phone numbers, for privacy reasons; and 2) competitively sensitive NextEra/FPL Energy-specific information that does not relate to the cost of the travel,” Bubriski wrote.
Aircraft play a vital role in the safe and reliable operations of our 35-county electric infrastructure. We adhere to policies and procedures that prevent unnecessary use and keep costs as low as possible.
New York Post photo of Hannah Giles, James O'Keefe
The scantily clad co-star of the undercover videos in which staffers for the liberal group ACORN appear complicit in prostitution and tax evasion is a Florida International University student whose father is the pastor of a church in Aventura.
Hannah Giles, 20, poses as a prostitute in the videos with 25-year-old accomplice James O’Keefe, a conservative activist who appears decked out in a fur-accented pimp costume.
Since the first in a series of videos was posted last week on the Internet, the Census Bureau has severed its ties to ACORN, Senators voted 83-7 to cut off housing grants to the group, the White House has voiced disapproval and ACORN has fired at least some of the employees caught on tape and pledged to do an independent investigation.
The more nearly $2 billion hanging in the balance of two utility rate hearings is contributing to the cloud of suspicion engulfing the regulatory panel that will rule on the cases, Public Service Commission Chairman Matthew Carter said today.
Before hearing on Florida Power & Light Co.’s requested $1.3 billion rate hike resumed after lunch, Carter offered the following statement on the goings-on.
“I think it’s no accident that all these shenanigans and sideshows are happening because we have these two rate cases,” Carter told The Palm Beach Post.
The panel is also considering a $500 million rate increase proposed by Progress Energy Florida.
“Some groups benefit if the rate case is denied. Some group benefits if the rate case is granted. But we’re going to make a decision. As for me, I will not be intimidated,” Carter added.
Public Service Commissioner Katrina McMurrian’s absence at the onset of this morning’s Florida Power & Light Co. rate hearing wasn’t a mystery after all.
McMurrian said she was about an hour late to the meeting because her response to a motion asking her to be removed from the panel for the rate increase vote wasn’t yet ready.
McMurrian, who refused to recuse herself, didn’t want to attend the meeting until her formal response had been filed, she said.
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 by Michael C. Bender
The kind of entertainment you'll find at lexandterry.com.
A syndicated program on a University of Florida radio station that features segments like “Running of the Bums” and “Mental Challenge, ” which asks callers to pick the real “mentally challenged” person, has been targeted by a pair of Florida House lawmakers who are asking college President Bernie Machen to step in and address the “unacceptable” material for a station at taxpayer-funded university.
“It is not our intention to censor positions or views. However, subject matter which is dehumanizing and/or degrading to the physically disabled or offensive to a specific gender or race in unacceptable,” state Reps. Joe Abruzzo, D-Wellington, and Erik Fresen, R-Miami, wrote to Machen. (Read the full letter here.)
The program, Lex & Terry, was originally launched in Jacksonville in 1993 but it now aired out of Dallas, according to the Jacksonville Times-Union. The program recently signed with Clear Channel after splitting with Cox Radio, which owns four radio stations in Florida and whose parent company, Cox Enterprises, also owns The Palm Beach Post.
The program was already canceled once by Machen, who trumpeted the achievement last year in news stories as a sign he was ridding the university of its party school image.
Democratic St. Lucie County Commissioner Chris Craft, who’s challenging freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney of Tequesta, will attend a fund-raiser in Washington, D.C., Thursday at the home of a lobbyist whose clients include ACORN and other liberal groups. The invitation lists liberal U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, as a host.
In a Republican-leaning congressional district that favored John McCain over Barack Obama last year, the National Republican Congressional Committee is using the event to paint Craft as an out-of-touch liberal.
“I think it would be nice to reject the increase. I’m trying to appoint members that would be sympathetic to the people and the economic challenge that they’re facing. So that’s a factor,” Crist said Monday.
Here’s an excerpt of today’s editorial:
“Imagine that the governor said: ‘I will base my decision on whether these commissioners approve what FPL wants. The company is very important to Florida, and its rates are the lowest in the state. FPL needs this money to make its plants more efficient, saving customers money and providing the electricity Florida will need to rejuvenate the economy.’
Hearing that, most people who don’t work for FPL or have a connection to the company would say, “How dare he?” And they would be right. Which is why it was just as wrong for Gov. Crist to say on Monday that he would reappoint Commissioners Matthew Carter and Katrina McMurrian only if they reject that $1.3 billion annual increase FPL wants.
The governor’s comment wasn’t just political grandstanding; it was borderline demagoguery, because it played on the public’s ignorance of the facts. When a seat on the Public Service Commission – which regulates power and phone companies – comes open, a 12-member nominating council accepts applications. The council screens and interviews those applicants, and recommends finalists. The governor must make his pick no more than 30 days after receiving the names.”
The Florida Power & Light Co. $1.3 billion rate hike hearing is droning on this morning as opponents to the increase grilled the utility’s expert witness Bill Avera on projected earnings and credit issues.
FPL reps sit in the audience, as they have each day of the hearing now more than a week into overtime above its planned one-week schedule.
But noticeably absent from the FPL pack is what until today had been their constant companions: BlackBerries.
Not only are their communication devices tucked away, their ever-present laptops sit idly inside their cases.
The change is likely due to the firestorm of controversy over secret messages called PINs exchanged between FPL attorney Natalie Smith and several of the commissioners aides. Critics fear Smith may have communicated with the aides during the hearings about the rate case under discussion.
FPL spokesman Mayco Villafana had this to say on the issue in an e-mail:
“Regarding pin communications what I can tell you is that Natalie Smith has never communicated via PIN with Commissioner Edgar or any other commissioner. With respect to PIN communications in general, these Blackberry-based text messages are not unusual nor any different than any other form of communication that isn’t paper-based such as a telephone call. In addition to those individuals you have cited, Natalie also has a PIN, for example, for Commissioner Argenziano’s chief advisor and had one for Commissioner Skop’s former chief advisor. Communication with staff members is a normal and appropriate part of the regulatory process in which all parties to any proceeding or issue regularly engage.”
Nancy Argenziano fired her aide Larry Williams for giving his PIN number to Smith. PSC Chairman Matthew Carter banned the commissioners and staff from using PINs or other types of messaging that don’t leave a public record.
He and Commissioner Lisa Edgar put their aides on paid leave indefinitely until a review of the PINs is complete. The panel is now considering requiring all communications between the PSC and the utilities be in writing.
PSC staff were unable to say where McMurrian was or whether she planned to attend the hearing.
About an hour later, McMurrian showed up with no discussion of the motion to have her step away from the case.
McMurrian sat on the panel for about 20 minutes before a copy of her motion denying the request to have her removed was available. It was only available by request and was not on the PSC’s website.
Stephen Stewart objected that McMurrian couldn’t be objective because she had was a panelist at a New York conference at which financing and credit issues related to the FPL rate case were discussed. Utility representatives had attended the conference but no consumer advocates were present, Stewart argued, so McMurrian could not be impartial in her vote on the rate hike.
But McMurrian said Stewart’s logic would put commissioners in a bind: they are supposed to be technical experts but wouldn’t be able to use any information that wasn’t purely objective to learn more about the issues.
That’s a paradox, she wrote.
“The media, both broadcast and print, continuously feature discussions about the general effects of economic conditions on businesses and consumers,” McMurrian wrote. “Even if I recused myself…I would still be the recipient of an unending flow of information concerning these issues, none of which can be realistically expected to be perfectly objective.
“Accordingly, I believe that the paradox presented by the motion is better resolved with more information, rather than less,” she wrote.
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 by Michael C. Bender
This story appeared Wednesday on page 1A of the Sept. 16 Palm Beach Post.
A unique, eight-character code buried inside every BlackBerry device is at the center of the latest intersection of technology and politics in Florida.
State lawmakers hand these codes, known as a personal identification numbers, or PINs, to lobbyists so they can exchange messages during hearings. Gov. Charlie Crist’s staff regularly trades PIN messages to stay in touch.
“It’s a faster form of communication,” Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, said of the messages that for years have fallen outside of the state’s public records laws.
Hasner has traded PIN messages from the House floor with lobbyists. He said the messages are usually brief and meaningless: “Need to talk” or “Where can I find you?”
“The idea that things are intentionally being done in secret is overblown,” said Hasner, a devoted BlackBerry user who has an old, worn-out model mounted in his Capitol office. “But I think the issue is worthy of further conversation and potentially addressing it with new policies.”
On Tuesday – just days after Florida Power & Light Co.’s $1.3 billion rate hearing was nearly derailed when state regulators discovered their staff exchanging PIN messages with FPL officials – Attorney General Bill McCollum said the state should seal the cracks in its open government laws.
As a guerilla conservative filmmaker has rolled out a series of undercover videos showing employees of the liberal advocacy group ACORN in Baltimore, Washington and New York appearing to condone prostitution and promote tax evasion, experienced Florida scandal watchers wonder when the inevitable Sunshine State connection will come.
But ACORN, which has fired at least some the employees caught on tape, claims filmmaker James O’Keefe and accomplice Hannah Giles — who pose as an outlandishly clad pimp and prostitute on the videos — were unsuccessful when they tried their hidden-camera sting in Miami and other cities.
And ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) says that in a video released Tuesday showing O’Keefe and Giles at a California ACORN office, the ACORN employee “could not take them seriously. So she met their outrageousness with her own personal style of outrageousness,” which included telling the actors she had killed her husband.
On Thursday, a conservative activist began releasing a series of undercover videos in which he and a female friend pose as a pimp and prostitute and appear to receive advice from ACORN employees in Baltimore, Washington and New York on how to get a mortgage for a brothel.
On Monday, the U.S. Senate voted 83-7 for an amendment to block any federal housing grants from going to the group. Both Florida’s Senators — Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican George LeMieux — were in the majority.
Public Service Commissioner Nancy Argenziano summed up her view of the public’s view of the regulatory panel mired in controversy while considering a proposed $1.3 billion Florida Power & Light Co. rate hike.
“The perception of people out there – they think we suck,” said Argenziano, a former state senator who is asking for a grand jury investigation into possible misconduct in the regulatory agency.
“Is that a technical term?” asked PSC Chairman Matthew Carter.
“That’s my technical term,” retorted Argenziano.
Argenziano participated by telephone in the panel’s discussion about how to handle what they called a “spaghetti bowl” of ethical questions about the regulators’ relationships with the utilities they oversee.
Commissioner Nathan Skop offered an unlikely solution: move the agency out from beneath the governor, who now appoints the five-member panel. (more…)
Whether they’re running for president or a state House seat, Republicans in need of campaign cash often find their way to Bill Diamond’s Palm Beach home.
A veteran of New York City Republican politics, the 73-year-old Diamond co-owns a real estate business and was elected to the Palm Beach town council this year.
He was a regional administrator for the U.S. General Services Administration under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, then was former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s commissioner of administrative services from 1994 to 2001.
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 by Michael C. Bender
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum today said messages sent between Blackberry devices, known as PINs, are indeed public records and that the state is capable of retaining the documents.
For years, PIN messages — regularly used among lobbyists, lawmakers and governor’s office officials — have fallen into a loophole in state Sunshine Laws because state officials have maintained the messages could not be recorded by government e-mail servers. (Press release here.)
McCollum, who is running for governor in 2010, said today that’s not true. He said PINs and other instant messages can be capture by, essentially, flipping a switch on a server. He said his agency would start keeping those records starting today and urged Gov. Charlie Crist, his fellow Cabinet members, state agencies and the legislature to do the same.
“I think it’s a great idea,” Crist said later in an interview with The Palm Beach Post. “We’ll follow suit.”
There’s a job opening at the Public Service Commission since general counsel Booter Imhof quit on Friday while the regulatory panel is mired in controversy.
Commissioner Lisa Edgar proposed two well-known Democratic politicians to step in for Imhof: former Attorney General Bob Butterworth, who also served as Department of Children and Families chief under Gov. Charlie Crist, and former state Sen. Rod Smith, who ran a losing battle in the Democratic primary for governor in 2006.
“It’s time to untangle the spaghetti bowl in which we find ourselves,” said Edgar.
“The question is why would they want to come into the spaghetti bowl?” questioned Commissioner Nathan Skop.
Commissioner Nancy Argenziano suggested former statewide prosecutor Melanie Hines.
Whoever the commission picks, Chairman Matthew Carter repeatedly laid down the law in one regard.
“I want them to agree not to come before us for at least five years in any capacity representing any party. I can’t go for that,” said Carter.
Carter said he’d prefer to have the prospective general counsel promise to never come before the panel, but backed away from that.
“If we’re dealing with a perception problem, then certainly we need to make sure we don’t add to it. The best thing to do when you’re in a hole is to stop digging,” he said.
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 by Michael C. Bender
Asked this morning about a $137 million rate hike for the Tampa Electric Company, a total that exceeds what the utility requested, Gov. Charlie Crist said the Florida Public Services Commission’s decision was “kind of bizarre.”
But Crist — who is usually quick to oppose increases in utility bills, insurance premiums or taxes — said he didn’t want to “pass judgment too quickly.”
“I’m not sure I understand all the details of that,” Crist said of the rate increase. “But it does sound odd on the surface.”
A group representing the utility’s customers have asked the Florida Supreme Court to block the increase.
The Public Service Commission tomorrow will discuss a proposal to require all communications between the regulatory panel and the utilities it oversees in writing.
The discussion comes amid a firestorm of criticism about commissioners’ aides swapping secret Blackberry codes with a Florida Power & Light Co. attorney that would allow them to communicate without creating a public record, even during hearings.
Commissioner Nancy Argenziano fired her aide for giving his Blackberry personal identification number – PIN – to FPL lawyer Natalie Smith and two other commissioners, including Chairman Matthew Carter, suspended theirs with pay for doing the same thing.
PSC Commissioner Katrina McMurrian
Commissioner Katrina McMurrian, who is not involved in the secret message melee, late Friday issued a proposal “to restore the public trust” as controversies involving the agency continue to make daily headlines.
Discussion of her proposal was added late this evening to the panel’s internal affairs agenda slated for tomorrow.
McMurrian is the target of a different conflict-of-interest criticism. An intervenor in FPL’s proposed $1.3 billion base rate hike case asked that she be disqualified from voting because she had hobnobbed with FPL executives during a conference in New York earlier this year.
Florida Power & Light’s proposed $1.3 billion rate hike hearing will resume Wednesday as planned despite a powerful GOP senator’s request that that case and another be put on hold.
But Sen. Mike Fasano’s letter asking for the delay went into the case files, Public Service Commission general counsel Booter Imhof responded in a letter sent to Fasano today.
“It’s laughable. It’s laughable. You would think it would be a joke or a hoax if this wasn’t so serious,” Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said of Imhof’s response.
Fasano’s district is almost exclusively served by Progress Energy Florida, which is seeking a $500 million base rate increase.
“I think that’s a sad response when you hear about the coziness they have with the utility companies but they can’t respond in a better way to a sitting senator who has concerns about his citizens and the rate increase,” Fasano said.
Imhof is the latest PSC employee to jump ship. He resigned on Friday and is going to work for the Florida House. The PSC’s lobbyist Ryder Rudd resigned last week after an internal investigation could not prove he violated state laws or rules by attending a Kentucky Derby party at the Palm Beach Gardens home of FPL executive Ed Tancer.
Since then, the commission has fended off conflict-of-interest concerns concerning communications, conferences and dinners.
Looking North between Military Trail and Alt. A-1-A in Palm Beach County in this 2005 photo. (Lannis Waters/The Palm Beach Post)
Joyce Tarnow, president of Floridians for a Sustainable Population, thinks so.
Tarnow called a press conference this afternoon to ask Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet to postpone their decisions on any comprehensive plan changes until voters decide on the so-called Hometown Democracy constitutional amendment in November 2010. The amendment would require comp plan changes to be approved by votes.
Tarnow said the amendment was essentially to save what’s left of Central and North Florida.
“Some people of South Florida say, ‘It’s too late. Everything is already gone,’” she said. “But the Treasure Coast, north-central Florida, northeast Florida – there are a lot of places that still have a lot to lose.”
Asked about that sentiment, 1000 Friends of Florida President Charles Pattison said, “We don’t agree with that.”
A syndicated program on a University of Florida radio station that features segments like “Running of the Bums” and “Mental Challenge, ” which asks callers to pick the real “mentally challenged” person, has been targeted by a pair of Florida House lawmakers who are asking college President Bernie Machen to step in and address the “unacceptable” material for a station at taxpayer-funded university.
The program, 
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