Last week was an expensive week in our household.  We received a $927 electricity bill from FPL, some 21percent higher than the same month last year. This was the result of the electric power rate increase which FPL was granted by the Public Service Commission, as a type of surcharge, to pay for their expenses for fixing lines and poles blown down during the previous hurricane season. In addition, last week we paid over $30,000 for a large electric generator to give us backup power.

A friend of our family who still works for FPL and used to be a lineman for them, shared with me that higher management pulled him and others off of regular pole and line maintenance a few years ago to do other chores. In fact, FPL reduced their workforce by a third, from 14,510 to 9,800. I don’t remember our bills being reduced any, but I have noted how FPL management brags in investment journals about their being one of the most, if not the most, profitable power companies in the United States. No wonder. They have cut their expenses by simply not maintaining their power poles and lines!  This is why you and I are suffering more power outages and having to spend hard-earned money on generators!
Then to add insult to injury, FPL brings in outside contract employees at $100 per hour to actually repair the lines and poles, and adds it as a surcharge on our bills!  It is a financial gimmick they have come up with to soak their customers, while paying huge bonuses to their management. In fact, Chief Executive Lewis Hays pays himself over $6 million per year!
This wouldn’t be happening if we went back to an elected Public Service Commission. When our governor Charlie Crist was running for U.S. Senate in 1998, he called for returning the PSC to elected positions as it was back in the 70’s. Legislation calling for an elected PSC has been filed several times in the legislature, but as soon as the FPL lobbyists get to work, it never gets out of committee. In fact it’s been reported that FPL maintains the highest number of lobbyists in the State.  It’s past time for the customers of FPL to get some relief, by reestablishing an elected PSC.  We all need to lean on our legislators and Governor to make it happen– sooner rather than later.

David Eller
Publisher