2 million electric cooperative member-owners face a $4.2 million consulting bill.
8 private firms charged the state more than $9.2 million – $5 million of it covered by taxpayers – for advice on what to do with Santee Cooper.
The rest of this bill may go to member-owners of Mid-Carolina Electric Co-op in Lexington County and 19 other cooperatives.
And it could grow by as much as $11 million.
The official state report details 3 options for the taxpayer-owned Santee Cooper utility’s future.
The details of the report were gathered in secret.
The SC Department of Administration report ends a closed-door process to collect and analyze what to do with the taxpayer-owned Santee Cooper utility.
Lawmakers suspended procurement laws for the Department of Administration to hire 8 private consulting and law firms to qualify bids, analyze proposals and negotiate contracts.
This secret process was not carried out in accordance with state law and was led by unaccountable bureaucrats and private-sector experts instead of the Santee Cooper Advisory Board which is accountable to the public.
The tab for taxpayers and ratepayers may go as high as $15 million.
Santee Cooper is almost $8 billion in debt – $4 billion of it from its abandoned nuclear reactor project with SC Electric & Gas.
Brundrett is the news editor of The Nerve. Contact him at 803-254-4411 or rick@thenerve.org .