SC lawmakers move ahead bill after bill, all to stop SCE&G from reaching in your wallet

S.C. lawmakers are ready to drop the hammer on SCE&G — with a flurry of bills aimed at blocking the utility from charging its 700,000 residential customers any more money for its failed nuclear project.

After a meeting Tuesday, the S.C. House now has six proposals ready for a floor vote when lawmakers return to Columbia Jan. 9.

And a special S.C. Senate committee Tuesday also moved forward with a similar package of proposals aimed at fixing problems that surfaced in July when SCE&G and state-owned Santee Cooper abandoned a nine-year, $9 billion effort to build two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County.

The votes Tuesday indicate both chambers are serious about blocking SCE&G from continuing to collect about $37 million a month – or about $27 per power bill – from its customers for the scuttled project.

Lawmakers’ actions also come five days after SCE&G’s proposal to cut $5 a month from its power bills was derided as too little, too late by S.C. lawmakers.

“The public has been duped,” said Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield. “I cannot defend allowing the utilities to continue charging for something for which the customer will never get a benefit. ... I don’t know how to defend that.”

SCE&G has hit customers with nine separate electricity rate hikes for the project, which have cost customers about $1.7 billion so far.

The company’s $5-a-month peace offering last week followed previous statements that SCE&G would offer no refunds and would attempt to bill customers for the $2.2 billion in outstanding construction costs it has sunk into the useless reactors.

State Rep. Peter McCoy, R-Charleston, said the debacle has allowed SCE&G executives to make millions more in salaries and bonuses but left SCE&G’s customers out to dry, struggling with higher electricity bills.

“How can these people continue to charge the rates they have charged to ratepayers — whether you’re a co-op or whether you’re SCE&G or whether you’re Santee (Cooper) — throughout our state, knowing what they knew?” McCoy asked, referring to how SCE&G withheld kept secret a critical February 2016 report that diagnosed problems at the V.C. Summer site 18 months before its abandonment.

The S.C. House and Senate have differed somewhat in their proposals to protect customers from paying for a power plant they won’t get, and in trying to fix a state regulatory system that enabled the nuclear debacle.

Both chambers have proposed to:

▪  Block state-owned Santee Cooper, SCE&G’s public partner in building the reactors at V.C. Summer, from charging its customers more for the nuclear project

▪  Create a consumer advocate to fight for power customers in rate-hike cases

▪  And give the state Office of Regulatory Staff, one watchdog of the utilities, more power to demand testimony and documents from utilities.

However, only the House has proposed to:

▪  Require that all Santee Cooper’s electricity rate hikes be approved by the state Public Service Commission, a body that regulates private utilities. Currently, Santee Cooper’s boards sets its rates.

▪  Sack members of the PSC and Santee Cooper board and set new qualifications for future applicants to those boards

Meanwhile, the Senate Tuesday voted to advance proposals that would, among other proposals:

▪  Block Santee Cooper from continuing to charge customers some 4.3 percent of their power bills for the nuclear project

▪  Block Santee Cooper from immediately spending the $900 million it received as part of a settlement with the parent company of the project’s lead contractor

▪  Abolish additional retirement plans for Santee Cooper employees, after former chief executive Lonnie Carter was granted a $800,000-per-year retirement

▪  And cap how much Santee Cooper can borrow.

This story was originally published November 21, 2017 at 4:01 PM with the headline "SC lawmakers move ahead bill after bill, all to stop SCE&G from reaching in your wallet."