SC utility leaders lack integrity

I hold the Legislature equally responsible with SCE&G and Santee Cooper executives for the unchecked spending without responsible management of the two new reactors that resulted in the nuclear fiasco.

Our Legislature buckled to the utilities and their lobbyists in passing a law that allowed exorbitant increases to ratepayers to cover construction costs and overruns. That’s bad enough, and those executives, legislators and lobbyists should be ashamed of themselves for their lack of concern for the citizens of South Carolina. Too bad it doesn’t end there.

We now know that these utilities had a report more than a year ago highlighting significant problems with the design, construction and management of the project and that they hid that information. They hid it from the Legislature. They hid it from ratepayers. They hid it from the Public Service Commission. Worst of all, they hid it from more than 5,000 workers who were surprised when they suddenly lost their jobs.

Regardless of how the utility executives and their board members try to paint it, they hid the truth from all of us and continued to earn pay and bonuses while allowing hard-working men and women to believe they had the income security to buy homes and cars and take vacations with their families. The executives and board members still have their jobs even though their decision to hide the truth from us harmed thousands of South Carolinians for years to come.

While I expect the utility executives and board members would tell us they are good men and women of faith, I do not think the lack of integrity and morals exhibited by them would cause many South Carolinians to see them as such. Even sadder, it doesn’t seem that there was even one person on their teams who had the integrity or moral conviction to stand up and say “this is wrong.”

We have all seen examples of excessive pay and bonuses earned through deceptive and/or questionable practices being clawed back. It appears to me that our Legislature and attorney general need to consider this option.

This story was originally published October 2, 2017 at 11:58 AM with the headline "SC utility leaders lack integrity."