nuke fiasco aftermath

Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office can’t talk about it yet, but ...

“We have a criminal investigation pending,” his spokesman Robert Kittle told the Chronicle.

“We can say that the revised rates were certainly intended by the legislature to be used for the costs of financing, not bonuses.

“This form of advanced cost recovery was designed to reduce costs to ratepayers,” Kittle said.

He said the Attorney General has filed legal briefs supporting lawmakers’ attempts to reduce rates and provide relief to customers.

“While we can’t talk about an ongoing investigation,” Kittle said. “Our briefs are public documents.”

Lawmakers and other observers have questioned why the Public Service Commission has allowed SCE&G to charge ratepayers an estimated $1.8 billion on the $9 billion they say they invested in their two failed nuclear reactors.

That’s 20% interest if it is going, as the company told the PSC, to pay for construction financing.

Frank Knapp of the SC Small Business Chamber and the Stop the Blank Check Coalition told the Chronicle that what SCE&G has collected should only be for construction finance costs on about $5 billion.

That would appear to almost double the interest on the $9 billion SCE&G says it has invested to date.

Santee Cooper sold bonds to cover their $4 billion share of the construction financing costs.

SCE&G’s Eric Boomhower has been asked for an explanation. To date, no one at SCE&G has responded.

This could be why SCE&G is withholding documents from those seeking information in 19 lawsuits.

Some of them say they suspect some of the money may be going to bonuses for SCE&G executives and to prop up investor dividends.

Knapp said if it is used for bonuses or any non-financing costs, “that would be fraud, because they told the PSC, which approved the rate hike, that money was to pay financing costs.”