Gov. Henry McMaster, lawmakers, regulators and the boards of Santee Cooper and SCANA owe us answers to:

• Why were SCANA executives being paid millions on

bonuses months after they abandoned their $9 billion nuclear power project?

• How was Santee Cooper’s customers’ money used to pay bonuses to SCANA’s brass?

• Why did the Santee Cooper CEO Lonnie Carter over-rule his own people’s objections to paying those bonuses?

• Why hasn’t the governor cleaned house at Santee Cooper, fired the board and appointed responsible people to run the taxpayer-owned utility?

Santee Cooper paid $8.9 million for SCANA bonuses, according to documents released by the governor’s office. And Lexington County-based SCANA continued to request money for bonuses even after construction was called off last July.

SCANA sent an invoice last August for $3.3 million in bonuses. When Santee Cooper VP Michael Crosby refused to pay, CEO Carter over-ruled him and Crosby “got reamed.”

Santee Cooper’s SCANA bonus payments were kept secret but the documents have been turned over to federal investigators probing the failed project with a federal grand jury.

Emails obtained by the Charleston Post and Courier, which prints the Chronicle, show Santee Cooper’s nuclear team repeatedly questioned if SCANA was mismanaging the project and overseeing its principal vendor, Westinghouse Electric which was hired to build the two nuclear reactors.

Westinghouse has landed in a New York bankruptcy court.

And SCANA ratepayers, investors and Santee Cooper’s coop customers like those at Mid-Carolina Electric, have been left holding the bag.

Why have state regulators, legislators and the governor done almost nothing about this multi-million dollar larceny?

Let’s hope federal prosecutors take the culprits to court, win their case for the customers and get their money back.

JerryBellune@yahoo.com

Why have lawmakers, regulators and the governor done little about this larceny?