It’s all right to applaud the Public Service Commission for reversing its bone-headed decision to hold SC Electric & Gas executives blameless.

How they could do that after all the evidence showed that SCE&G’s owners – since retired SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh, nuclear head Stephen Byrne and CFO Jimmy Addison – withheld critical information and lied about their failures?

To understand how the PSC made such a ruling and then reversed themselves, you have to understand that they are politicians, not fair-minded judges as they would have you believe.

State lawmakers elected Elliott Elam, Jr. of Lexington and his fellow commissioners.

They serve at lawmakers’ pleasure as was shown when House Speaker Jay Lucas told them how to rule on SCE&G’s deceitful conduct.

You can bet certain lawmakers lobbied the commissioners.

This pressuring is routine, even if it is highly unethical.

Among all that is wrong with our regulated monopolies is the cynicism and political greed it injects into the system.

As long as the PSC gives the monopolists at SCE&G – and now Dominion Energy – what they want, they are willing to share the loot with lawmakers in the form of political donations and other favors.

Soiled as it is, it is a business arrangement in which the guards at the hen house let the foxes in whenever they want.

The losers in this charade are 727,000 SCE&G ratepayers and thousands of others who have to buy their power from other monopolies and water from Carolina Water Service.

If you think lawmakers will change this system, you will be disappointed, whether the power provider is in Virginia or anywhere else.

Dominion, many sources say, owns the Virginia legislature.

In 2020, Dominion will be asking the PSC for more rate hikes and – guess what? – they will get them.

Nothing will change until voters make lawmakers open the market to competition.

– Jerry Bellune