SC lawmakers break own law

Regulators given no performance reviews

Posted 1/8/21

By Rick Brundrett 

Special to the Chronicle

This may not come as a surprise to you.

A legislative committee has again violated a law requiring written evaluations of state …

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SC lawmakers break own law

Regulators given no performance reviews

Posted

By Rick Brundrett 
Special to the Chronicle

This may not come as a surprise to you.
A legislative committee has again violated a law requiring written evaluations of state regulators.
The 7 Public Service Commissioners the committee evaluates set utility rates for Dominion Energy and other investor-owned gas and electric utilities. 
The PSC is holding mote public hearings on Dominion’s nearly 8% electric rate hike requests after we questioned the indifferent, hurried way the PSC handled the 1st hearings.
The law requires the Public Utilities Review Committee to annually evaluate the performance of each commissioner and submit it to the General Assembly.
Lawmakers elect the candidates the PURC nominates and have final accountability for their appointments. 
The commissioners are paid $132,071 a year.
Under law, the reviews must go to each commissioner and a final report be submitted to lawmakers after each member has the “opportunity to be heard.” 
The PURC’s annual report dated Nov. 18 contains self-evaluations by commissioner but no written PURC reviews  as required by law.
The reviews become part of each commissioner’s record for consideration if the member seeks reelection.
4 commissioners last year no longer serve and have been replaced.
No reviews were given after SCANA and Santee Cooper lied to the PSC about the $9 billion nuclear project that cost ratepayers $2.2 billion. The commissioners had approved 9 rate hikes for the bungled project.
Before the mismanaged project was abandoned, the PURC gave glowing, boilerplate annual reviews.
The rate hikes were made possible by a 2007 law that SCANA lobbyists and lawyers wrote and convinced lawmakers to quietly pass.
PURC chairman Sen. Thomas Alexander and vice chairman Rep. Bill Sandifer did not respond to phone requests for comment.
Ex-commissioner Swain Whitfield told us that in his 1st 9 years the PURC gave lawmakers no written reviews of any commissioners.
The PURC never met with him but did send written evaluations to him.
He said the written reviews stopped in 2017 after SCANA and Santee Cooper abandoned the project. 
In 2019, the PURC for the 1st time met with commissioners privately to review their performance, he said.
“We were told it was going to be unpleasant and it was unpleasant,” he recalled.
The former PSC chairman said he was surprised when the PURC without explanation found him not qualified to serve another term.
The PURC’s latest report to the legislature includes performance questionnaires filled out by commissioners Florence Belser, Thomas Ervin and Justin Williams.
   
Brundrett is news editor of The Nerve (www.thenerve.org). Contact him at 803-254-4411 or rick@thenerve.org. 

regulators, Performance, reviews, sc, lawmakers, public, Sevice, Commission

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