Senate

South Carolina’s Legislative Session Ends With A Compromise For Santee Cooper

After a few days of debate, the South Carolina Senate finally reached a compromise on Santee Cooper.

While a final decision of whether or not to sell the state-owned utility is most likely months away, South Carolina lawmakers are ready to receive and review serious offers from companies interested in either purchasing or managing Santee Cooper.

Last Thursday, May 9, marked the end of the regular legislative session, just one week after lawmakers voted to explore possible options and bids for Santee Cooper to help move the process forward and find a solution that will benefit Santee Cooper’s millions of direct-serve and cooperative customers.

With over $7 billion in debt, many South Carolina residents are hoping lawmakers vote to sell, rather than find new management so that they aren’t stuck paying off the debt through increased utility rates for years to come.

The Senate bill was sent to the House which was amended and passed early last week which will allow the state Department of Administration to seek offers from potential buyers and have a team of experts evaluate each offer.

In addition to these outside offers, Santee Cooper is able to submit one offer per the proposal.

Once the experts evaluate all offers, they will then bring the best management offer, purchase offer, and Santee Cooper’s offer to the General Assembly who will then vote on what to do.

Lawmakers also agreed to discuss Santee Cooper further during a special three-day session starting May 20 which will include further deliberation on Santee Cooper.

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South Carolina Senators Recognize Missteps By Santee Cooper’s Leadership And Discuss The Future Of Santee Cooper

Yesterday marked the first day that South Carolina legislators started the discussion on legislation that would authorize the State Department of Administration to move forward with a competitive bidding process for Santee Cooper.

Senator Leatherman, R-Florence, kicked off the conversation with Senator Rankin, R-Horry, noting the missteps taken by Santee Cooper’s leadership. He finished by stating he didn’t favor selling nor favor keeping Santee Cooper and felt that they needed to review all options before making a decision.

Following Sen. Leatherman was Senator Massey, R-Edgefield, who gave more background on how Santee Cooper got in this position in the first place, “We need to take a few steps back before we get into a conversation –before we talk about whether to sell or not to sell — to figure out how we got in this position.”

He went on to explain that back in the 2007-2008 timeframe, Santee Cooper and, at the time, SCANA announced their decision to pursue nuclear power. At that time both companies entered into a partnership and began their failed V.C. Summer nuclear project.

Due to the fact that South Carolina hadn’t constructed a nuclear power generating plant in over forty years, both companies decided to hire Westinghouse to help move the project forward. However, they quickly realized that Westinghouse wasn’t competent enough to handle the project.

Fast forward to August 31, 2017, when the announcement to abandon the project was made.

Senator Massey went on to disclose that if you were to look at documents dating back to 2011 there were already conversations going on that proved Santee Cooper leadership knew this project was going downhill and was going to fail. However, not one time did Santee Cooper leadership bring any of these issues to the general assembly. They continued their involvement and as Sen. Massey said, “they kept plunging money into [the project].”

He pointed out that about 5 percent of customers’ utility rates is going towards paying off the V.C. Summer debt and Santee Cooper is projecting that rates will rise between 12 and 14 percent for years to come to help pay off the debt. Which he said was just “Santee Cooper’s estimates.”

While this has been ongoing for many months, all senators who spoke today made it a point to say that they didn’t want to rush into a decision. But, Sen. Massey grew frustrated that this has been going on for so long and nothing has been done to fix these issues.

Having been involved in conversations from the time it was finally brought to light by Santee Cooper leadership, Sen. Massey said “One of the things that frustrates me is this didn’t happen yesterday. We all learned about it almost two years ago and they really haven’t done a whole lot to fix any of the problems.”

While a decision won’t be made today or even tomorrow, Sen. Leatherman made sure to note that he had no intentions in sending this issue back to the joint-committee, and Sen. Massey hopes to have a decision before the end of this legislative session in May.

Whatever decision they come to, the Senate recognizes that Santee Cooper might not have the right leadership in place. “There’s a real question whether they have people in the decision making positions they need to be for running a utility,” Sen. Massey stated.

The conversation is set to continue tomorrow.

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South Carolina Lawmakers Issues Santee Cooper and Education

S.C. Senate Creates Another New Committee To Review All Santee Cooper Options

Featured Image Source: Andrew Whitaker, Post & Courier

Last week the South Carolina Senate created a new committee to help decide the future of Santee Cooper.

This decision comes just one week after S.C. Senate President Harvey Peeler decided not to move forward with ICF Consulting, the consulting firm vetting and researching the offers received for the state-owned utility.

The State reported that the new Senate “Select Committee” will work separately from the legislative committee studying ICF’s recommendations and will focus on reviewing all options for the utility. Other options include an outside firm coming in to manage the utility, long-term power agreements, or structural reforms.

Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey and Senate Minority Leader Nikki Setzler will co-chair the new committee. Both senators previously led the committee that investigated the failed nuclear reactors that helped create the massive $8 billion debt.

According to The State, Santee Cooper’s direct-serve customers will possibly have to pay around $6,200 more per household in higher rates over the next four decades and their co-op customers will have to pay $4,200 more per household to pay off the debt created by the failed Santee Cooper V.C. summer project.