TALLAHASSEE — During a meeting of the Florida Public Service Commission where the PSC voted 5-0 against Indian River County’s petition, and in support of Vero’s permanent right to serve customers in the unincorporated county, Vero’s lead attorney told the PSC the city has no plans to get out of the electric business.
“We do not intend to voluntarily sell our system,” Robert Scheffel “Schef” Wright testified near the end of his arguments Tuesday morning before the PSC.
Wright also discounted customers’ concerns about the disparity in the cost of power from Vero and the cost of power from FPL by saying, “The County goes on about rates, rates, rates, rates, rates, rates, rates. The arguments about rates are utterly irrelevant.”
Throughout months-long negotiations with governments representing Vero’s outside customers in the County and the Town of Indian River Shores in disputes over high electric rates, Vero officials stated that they’d exhausted all possible avenues for closing a sale to Florida Power and Light, and blamed unbreakable contracts with the Florida Municipal Power Agency for the failed sale.
Mayor Dick Winger, distancing himself from Wright’s statement, said in the hallway outside the PSC chambers after the ruling, “Now this is just me, but we would still sell the utility tomorrow, if we could.”
On the issue of rates, Winger said he hoped that everyone could come together and work with Vero to get rates down, now that the PSC matter has been decided.
County officials traveled to Tallahassee in hopes of getting a ruling that would give them options after the County’s electric franchise agreement with Vero expires in March 2017.
“They want to be able to designate a successor utility. Only you, the PSC gets to declare who serves where,” Wright said.
Despite the County’s pleas, the PSC ruled to defend Vero’s right to keep its territory and in so doing, also defended the PSC’s own “exclusive and superior authority” to grant, change and revoke such territorial rights.
The County’s attorney, Floyd Self, argued that the matter of what happens after the County’s franchise agreement with Vero expires is a local issue and falls under the County’s authority with regard to property rights.
The franchise agreement — which the County has told Vero it will not renew in 2017 — gives Vero the right to use county rights of way for utility infrastructure needed to provide electric service.
“This is outrageous and illegal relief that the city is seeking from you today. The PSC has no jurisdiction or authority with regard to local franchise agreements,” Self said.
“The property rights a utility must secure to actually serve an area can only be conveyed by the owner of the property, which in this case is the County,” he continued, and also said that what Vero was asking of the PSC is inappropriate because of the pending circuit court lawsuit against Vero.
“The Town’s lawsuit is a complete bar to the City’s petition,” Self said.
Later on, the PSC staff emphasized that the Shores lawsuit deals with “an entirely separate franchise agreement and entirely different issues,” as the Shores legal team has argued these past months.
Wright, on behalf of Vero, argued that the city needed the PSC’s ruling for planning purposes and to ensure the integrity of the power grid for providing reliable electric service.
The County is threatening to evict us . . . we have to make certain significant planning decisions,” Wright said, including whether or not to mothball Vero’s aging Big Blue power plant. “If we don’t know who we’re going to serve, we can’t make those decisions.”
Self rebutted Wright’s arguments in the three minutes he had remaining after Vero, Duke Energy, Tampa Electric Co., the Florida Municipal Electric Association and the Florida Electric Cooperatives Association had all lined up to oppose Indian River County and to argue in defense of PSC-designated territories living beyond any local franchise agreements.
“The claims of stranded investments and the grid’s going to go all to hell if you don’t support the territorial rights is ridiculous,” Self told the PSC.
Tuesday’s ruling of the Florida Public Service Commission, according to Indian River County’s attorney, negates the power of the County’s electric franchise agreement with Vero.
With the PSC affirming Vero’s right and responsibility to provide electric service and, according to the County, trouncing upon the County’s own rights to award franchise agreements and the County’s authority in matters of property rights, the parties seem poised for some sort of appeal.
County officials also said Tuesday that the next steps are to change the Florida Statute and to re-examine the pending lawsuit filed by Indian River Shores to see if the County might jump in somehow.