Santee Cooper plans to pay $20,000 to help combat “rampant misinformation.”

The money is for Chip Felkel, a Republican political consultant, to contest what Santee Cooper executives call misleading claims about its rates, financial stability and debt, The State newspaper reported.

“Why does Santee Cooper’s public relations staff need to hire Felkel?” asked SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce CEO Frank Knapp, a close observer of the Santee Cooper-SC Electric & Gas nuclear fiasco.

“Don’t they already have people who do this?”

Lawmakers this week are debating selling the taxpayer-owned utility that is $8 billion in debt – $4 billion of it from the $9 billion nuclear failure created with SC Electric & Gas.

The utility’s customers are paying about $5 a month in higher rates for the project.

Their rates are to rise another $8 a month for 40 years to pay off the debt.

At $13 a month for 40 years, that may cost ratepayers such as those at Mid-Carolina Electric in Lexington County anywhere from $4,200 to $6,240.

“It is important that stakeholders across South Carolina know the facts that are relevant to that discussion,” Santee Cooper spokeswoman Mollie Gore wrote in an email to The State.

Santee Cooper has sent an “open letter to customers” saying its rates are no higher than Dominion Energy and Duke Energy and that it is financially stable.

“We’re going to look at those and try to set the record straight,” Felkel told Avery Wilks of The State, “and then whatever happens in the General Assembly is what happens.”