Florida Power & Light Co. made a second multi-million dollar concession this morning in hopes of nailing down a $1.3 billion rate hike.

The state’s largest utility is scrapping about $37 million in executive pay from its proposed base rate increase, letting customers off the hook for the pay.

FPL already backed off $16 million in aviation costs this morning, lowering its $1.3 billion rate hike by about $53 million.

The company is challenging in court the PSC’s demand that the names of the 440 employees earning more than $165,000 per year be made public.

Read FPL attorney Susan Clarke’s statement at the hearing after the jump.
(more…)

The Public Service Commission resumed a prolonged hearing on Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.3 billion rate hike this morning with disagreements over the utility’s corporate jets.

Testimony is expected to go through 8 p.m. tonight and finish up on Friday.

FPL Group Chief Financial Officer Armando Pimentel sat patiently as the hearing started just before 10 a.m. as both sides argued about accounting for plane flights.

Opponents of the increase questioned how the Juno Beach-based power company’s allocated charges for the jets and helicopters. They want to know whether customers are paying to ferry FPL executives, their wives and guests to destinations including Napa Valley and Louisville during the Kentucky Derby.

The hearings have gone on intermittently since August under a cloud of suspicion about possible conflicts of interest.

It’s not the first time the regulatory agency has been rocked by allegations of close ties with the utilities.

(more…)

The Public Service Commission’s inspector general won’t investigate Commissioner Nancy Argenziano, turning down a request from a business group backing Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.3 billion rate hike.

PSC Inspector General Steven Stolting told Associated Industries of Florida lawyer Tamela Perdue in a letter that he won’t investigate allegations of impropriety and impartiality revealed in BlackBerry PIN messages exchanged between Argenziano and former aide Larry Harris.

AIF should file an ethics complaint instead, Stolting advised.

Stolting’s office is restricted to “conduct oversight activities within the Commission,” he wrote.

Argenziano called AIF’s accusations “baseless” and “stupid.”

Read here about FPL’s connection to AIF’s press release demanding the investigation.

Utility regulators should not delay a vote this year on Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.3 billion rate hike, Public Service Commission staff recommended today.

Gov. Charlie Crist asked the panel to hold off on FPL’s rate case and on Progress Energy Florida’s proposed $500 million rate increase until next year when his new hand-picked commissioners join the panel on Jan. 1.

FPL’s rate case is slated to resume Wednesday and finish up on Friday after dragging on more than two months longer than originally scheduled.

The PSC should ignore Crist’s request, staff wrote in a recommendation today. The panel is scheduled to vote on the recommendation next Tuesday.

The PSC is scheduled to vote on the amount of FPL’s base rate hike on Dec. 21 and on Progress Energy’s on Nov. 19.

FPL argued that the case should move forward because it would take the new commissioners – former newspaper editorial writer David Klement and Panhandle accountant and bar owner and manager Benjamin “Steve” Stevens – too long to get up to speed on the voluminous filings in the cases.
(more…)

Two utility regulators’ aides are back on the job after being suspended with pay during investigations into BlackBerry messages exchanged with utility representatives.

Public Service Commission Chairman Matthew Carter reinstated aide William Garner on Oct. 5 and Commissioner Lisa Edgar put aide Roberta Bass back to work on Oct. 12.

The aides will be on the job when the PSC continues a hearing on Florida Power & Light Co.’s $1.3 billion rate hike request on Wednesday.

(more…)

Utility regulators have added an extra day to hear testimony in the $1.3 billion Florida Power & Light Co. rate hike case.

The base rate case is already into overtime and is running long past the original two weeks scheduled for early August, including several back-to-back 12-plus hour days of testimony.

The Public Service Commission was slated to finish the hearings on Wednesday and Thursday but this morning added Friday to the schedule.

Only four commissioners remain on the regulatory panel – former Commissioner Katrina McMurrian walked off the $133,000 a year job recently after Gov. Charlie Crist effectively fired her and Chairman Matthew Carter and appointed two new members who will take over on Jan. 1.

The Juno Beach-based utility’s rate case and Progress Energy Florida’s proposed $500 million base rate increase is shining an unwelcome spotlight on the agency that heretofore operated with little public interest.
(more…)

The Public Service Commission just agreed by a 3-1 vote to let customers pick up the tab for $62.7 million of Florida Power & Light’s construction costs for new nuclear power plants.

Commissioner Nancy Argenziano casting the sole vote against the increase.

FPL customers will pay $0.67 for 1,000 kilowatt hours for the nuclear cost charges next year as a result of today’s vote.

The Juno Beach-based utility is also asking for a $1.3 billion base rate hike, but when the panel votes on that issue remains unclear.

Gov. Charlie Crist asked the PSC to wait until next year when his two new appointees to the regulatory agency come on board to vote on the FPL base rate hike and another $500 million base rate increase sought by Progress Energy Florida.

Argenziano, appointed by Crist in 2007, is likely to become chairwoman of the panel next year.

Even if FPL’s base rate increase is approved, customers’ bills will go down by at least $9 because of a drop in fuel charges.

Public Service Commission Chairman Matthew Carter wants everyone to leave him and his colleagues alone so they can get on with their jobs and has no plans to ask for an internal investigation into charges of possible conflicts of interest or bias against Commissioner Nancy Argenziano, he said today.

“Right now I plan on getting through this hearing,” Carter told reporters during a break in a nuclear cost recovery meeting now ongoing.

The panel is scheduled to vote later today on requests from Florida Power & Light Co. to charge customers $63 million for what the utility’s expenses on nuclear power plant construction and a similar $236 million request from Progress Energy Florida.

Yesterday, Associated Industries of Florida President Barney Bishop asked that PSC’s inspector general look into thousands of BlackBerry messages exchanged between Argenziano and her aide Larry Williams over the past two years. Bishop accused Argenziano of potentially breaking laws barring ex parte communications between regulators and the utilities and of breaking her oath of office in unflattering comments aimed at her colleagues.

Read about FPL’s link with AIF’s press release here.

AIF’s demand is yet another distraction for the panel also poised to vote on about $2 billion in base rate increases – $1.3 billion sought by FPL and $500 million by Progress.

Ten days ago, the panel turned down a $1.6 billion request from FPL to build a natural gas pipeline through 14 counties.

State Attorney Willie Meggs said recently that his investigators have found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing at the agency. And several internal investigations resulted in similar findings.
(more…)

Associated Industries of Florida sent a press release demanding an investigation of Public Service Commissioner Nancy Argenziano to Florida Power & Light Co. for review yesterday, officials for both groups said.

A version of the release posted on The Sayfie Review shows the author of the release as “FPL_User” last saved by “Lisa Garcia” and the company as “Florida Power & Light.”

Lisa Garcia works for Ron Sachs Communications, the Tallahassee-based PR agency handling media for AIF on the issue.

AIF has joined FPL in support of its requested $1.3 billion base rate hike.

FPL is a member of the business backed association that refuses to reveal its membership or how much they pay to belong to the group.

The latest bit of drama in the FPL/Argenziano/PSC serial unfolds as the regulatory panel is scheduled to vote on the Juno Beach-based utility proposed $200 million rate increase to cover the costs of nuclear plants not yet built.

Sachs executive Alia Faraj, a former spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush, said that her shop crafted the press release and gave it to FPL.
(more…)

Public Service Commissioner Nancy Argenziano dismissed a business-backed group’s demand for an investigation into her BlackBerry messages with her former aide as ridiculous and an attempt to intimidate her.

“It’s highly suspicious and rather stinky at this point,” Argenziano said.

Associated Industries of Florida President Barney Bishop today asked for a PSC inspector general investigation into thousands of messages exchanged between Argenziano and Larry Williams, a former aide whom Argenziano fired for giving his secret BlackBerry personal identification number to a Florida Power & Light Co. attorney.

(more…)

State Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera joined the call for an internal investigation into BlackBerry messages sent by utility regulators.

Lopez-Cantera, R-Miami, serves on the Public Service Commission Nominating Council that selects who gets to serve on the regulatory panel. The governor makes the final picks.

“The PIN messages sent and received by Commissioner Nancy Argenziano and released by the PSC, coupled with their discussion of private emails so far unreleased and sent to non-public accounts in an attempt to evade public scrutiny, raise serious questions about Commissioner Argenziano’s impartiality and her ability to give a fair hearing to those appearing before her,” Lopez-Cantera wrote in a statement distributed to the media.

Earlier today, Associated Industries of Florida President Barney Bishop demanded the PSC’s inspector general check out Commissioner Nancy Argenziano’s BlackBerry PIN messages.

Bishop said Argenziano may have broken rules restricting communications between the regulators and the utilities and may have acted in a manner unbecoming a commissioner, a violation of her oath of office.

It’s no surprise that Lopez-Cantera has jumped on the Argeziano attack wagon.
(more…)

Associated Industries of Florida president Barney Bishop took media matters into his own hands this morning after being fed up with a lack of attention to a utility regulator’s BlackBerry messages.

Bishop is demanding that the Public Service Commission inspector general conduct an investigation into messages exchanged by Commissioner Nancy Argenziano and her former aide Larry Williams that he said raises questions about her impartiality on an impending $1.3 billion Florida Power & Light Co. rate hike request.

AIF is supporting FPL, one of its business association members, in the rate case.

Bishop has put the thousands of messages – made available through public records requests by news agencies – on AIF’s website, but singled out Argenziano’s in a press conference this morning.

(more…)

State Attorney Willie Meggs says there’s no evidence of criminal wrongdoing at the Public Service Commission but he hasn’t ended his investigation of possible violations of Florida’s broad Sunshine Laws.

His investigators “are about running out of things to do and people to talk to but at this point we have not found anything criminal,” Meggs said.

But he hasn’t yet shut down the investigation, the prosecutor said.

(more…)

FPL Group CEO Lew Hay and three other chief executives broke bread with President Barack Obama yesterday in the president’s private dining room.

But taxpayers needn’t worry about picking up the tab for the Hay and the bosses of Amazon.com, Kraft and Eastman Kodak.

The Wall Street Journal’s Elizabeth Williamson blogged that the four chiefs whipped out their credit cards at the end of a sandwich and salad luncheon “for the same price as the going rate outside the walls of the White House.”

It was the third Dutch-treat lunch hosted by the president at the White House, Williamson reported.

Obama’s no-free-lunch policy is meant to reflect the administration’s harsh view of coziness between elected officials and special interests.

That attitude is also reflected in Florida’s gift ban laws that make it illegal for legislators or their staff from accepting goodies of any sort – including meals, beverages and even after-dinner mints – from lobbyists or for lobbyists to give them.
(more…)

FPL Group CEO Lew Hay lunched with President Barack Obama and a handful of other Fortune 500 executives at the White House today.

FPL Group’s subsidiary, Florida Power & Light Co., has been in the headlines lately because of a contentious hearing over a proposed $1.3 billion rate increase and a $1.5 billion natural gas pipeline nixed by state regulators earlier this week.

Today, the Juno Beach-based power company agreed to pay $20 million in fines to federal regulators and spend another $5 million on itself to improve reliability of its electric grid after a 2008 blackout that thousands of customers in the dark for hours.

Lew along with Amazon.com Jeff Bezos, Eastman Kodak Co.’s Antonio Perez and Kraft Foods Inc.’s Irene Rosenfeld ate with Obama in his private dining room.

“The Administration has continued to seek the input of a diverse group of business leaders in order to hear directly from the private sector about key issues including the health of the financial sector, health insurance reform, climate change policy and job creation,” a White House press release on the meeting said.

Hay boasted to the president about FPL Group’s environmental achievements and Florida Power & Light’s plans to open the nation’s largest solar power plant later this month in Arcadia, FPL spokesman Mark Bubriski said.

“Mr. Hay had a great conversation with the President and fellow business leaders,” Bubriski said. “He also discussed his belief that forward-looking, clean-energy policies are vital to America’s economic recovery and FPL Group’s strong support for legislation to combat global warming and strengthen America’s energy security.”

Hopefully Hay got a warmer reception from Obama, a Democrat, than the cold shoulder Republican Gov. Charlie Crist has been giving the state’s largest utility.

(more…)

Here’s the latest installment in the seemingly perpetual Public Service Commission drama.

Sen. Mike Fasano today shot back at Associated Industries of Florida president Barney Bishop who yesterday publicly accused Fasano of interfering in the utility regulators’ business as the PSC considers three cases that could collectively cost Floridians up to $3 billion a year in extra energy costs.

Fasano yesterday asked Commissioner Lisa Edgar to resign because of an ethics complaint about her communicating with an FPL executive during a hearing. The ethics commission found no probable cause that Edgar, reappointed by Gov. Charlie Crist to the PSC last year, did anything wrong.

AIF supports Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.3 billion rate hike, and yesterday evening Bishop called out Fasano by name for trying to influence the outcome of that case and a proposed $500 million Progress Energy Florida rate increase.

“Any attempt by anyone to influence “due process”, whether they are an elected official or not, is inappropriate,” Bishop said in a statement.

That got to Fasano, who issued a statement demanding his own due process.

“Barney Bishop is a highly paid representative for utility companies throughout Florida. Mr. Bishop states that I am interfering in the due process that Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light are entitled to as the Florida Public Service Commission considers billion dollar rate increase requests. As anyone versed in the most elemental aspects of law should know, due process entitles one to face his or her accuser. Since Mr. Bishop, and Associated Industries of Florida, has stated that my involvement in this case is inappropriate, I challenge Mr. Bishop to publicly debate me on this issue,” Fasano, R-New Port Richey, wrote.
(more…)

The Public Service Commission will decide whether to give in to Gov. Charlie Crist’s request to put off about $2 billion in utility rate increases later this month.

Crist asked the panel to postpone hearings considering Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.3 billion base rate hike and Progress Energy Florida’s $500 million similar request until next his two new PSC appointees come on board on Jan. 1.

PSC Chairman Matthew Carter, whom Crist passed over for reappointment last week, told Crist in a letter sent this morning that the panel would discuss his request at its next publicly noticed meeting on Oct. 27.

“To avoid claims of violation of due process, the parties to both dockets should be permitted to address your request,” Carter wrote based on the recommendation of PSC attorney Mary Anne Helton.

The PSC is right now preparing to vote on a $1.5 billion FPL natural gas pipeline. The cost for the pipeline would also be added into FPL customers’ base rate, but Crist did not ask for a delay on that vote.

The FPL vote on the base rate hike is scheduled for Dec. 21 and the Progress Energy vote is slated for Nov. 21.

After a lengthy discussion this morning, the Public Service Commission decided to move forward with a vote on Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.5 billion natural gas pipeline.

The state’s largest natural gas distributor, Florida Gas Transmission Co. LLC, asked that the case be terminated because of allegations of coziness between FPL and PSC staff. FGT wants to be the one to build the state’s third natural gas pipeline.

The PSC denied FGT’s motion but only after a review of an internal investigation into whether the staff was pressured into recommending that FGT’s request be turned down.

Adding to the confusion, the staff analysis recommended both approval and denial of the proposed FPL pipeline.

Commissioner Nathan Skop said he asked for an inspector general investigation into the matter because some PSC aides had complained to him that they were being “railroaded” into coming down on a particular side of the issue.

“Some staff said the discussions among staff in this case were unnecessarily hostile. One said, while conceding that arguments among staff are common, in this case SGA staff seemed to be trying to ‘censor’ views that differed from theirs and that the forceful tone of their argument was unprecedented,” Inspector General Stephen Stolting wrote in his Sept. 16 report.

The PSC’s director of the Office of Strategic Analysis and Government Affairs (SGA) Ryder Rudd abruptly resigned during the midst of the pipeline discussions on Sept. 7 after an internal investigation into his attendance at FPL VP Ed Tancer’s Kentucky Derby party.

“It is clear that the development of the staff recommendation in this docket was contentious and difficult,” Stolting concluded. “However, we found no basis to question the motivation of SGA staff or to support allegations of bias. Based on this conclusion, no recommendation is offered.”

Skop said Stolting’s report “watered down” some of the staff’s concerns but that it helped to balance the recommendations and that, without it, the alternative recommendation to deny the pipeline would not have been included.

“I don’t care how you want to cut it…that wasn’t going to happen. The likelihood was not promising,” Skop said.

Gov. Charlie Crist will replace Katrina McMurrian, who abruptly resigned from the Public Service Commission this morning, to fill out the less than three months remaining in her term.

Crist effectively fired McMurrian and PSC Chairman Matthew Carter, both appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2006, last week by refusing to reappoint them to the panel when their terms run out Dec. 31.

Crist’s general counsel Rob Wheeler asked the Public Service Nominating Council for a list of three recommendations to fill McMurrian’s place.

Wheeler asked the council’s lawyer Jay Vail to hurry up with the recommendations “so that there is no membership gap in representation on the Commission.”

There will be a membership gap beginning tomorrow, when the PSC – minus McMurrian, whose resignation was effective immediately – is scheduled to take a vote on a Florida Power & Light Co. proposed $1.5 billion, 300-mile natural gas pipeline.
(more…)

A vote tomorrow on whether Florida Power & Light Co. should get the thumbs up on a proposed $1.5 billion natural gas pipeline should go on, staff for the regulatory panel recommended today.

Florida Gas Transmission Co. LLC, the state’s largest natural gas transmission provider, asked the Public Service Commission to dismiss the FPL case because of the appearance of improper relationships shared by the Juno Beach-based utility and the regulators.

The PSC’s lobbyist Ryder Rudd resigned after an internal investigation into possible misconduct after Rudd admitted he attended a Kentucky Derby party at the Palm Beach Gardens home of FPL VP Ed Tancer. Rudd had a hand in analyzing FPL’s proposed 300-mile pipeline.

FGT objected that the process should start anew and that the commission should consider FPL’s proposal after an “untainted” staff support process.

Instead, PSC staff today recommended moving forward with tomorrow’s vote.

The staff’s analysis “provides primary and alternate recommendations on the most controversial issues in the case, and it provides a wide variety of options for the Commission’s consideration. It is perhaps the best evidence of the full and fair review that the staff conducted in the case, whether contentious along the way or not,” the recommendation reads.