We’ve written many times about Texas’s competitive utility system and the low electric rates it produces.

If a state the size of Texas can do it, a state as small as ours can, too. The only thing holding us back is our legislature.

Do they have the political will to do it? So far, apparently not.

As we reported last week, the Public Service Commission – the quasi-judicial regulators entrusted to protect the public from greedy utility managers – completely failed us.

We’re not alone. The SC Office of Regulatory Staff, environmentalist Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club and the SC Small Business Chamber of Commerce contend the Public Service Commissioners erred in their findings. They say the PSC should have found that SC Electric & Gas mismanagers:

• Acted imprudently in deceiving them and hiding evidence of mismanaging a failed $9 billion nuclear project.

• Violated the Base Load Review Act (BLRA) and should not have been allowed to bilk billions of dollars in recovery charges from 727,000 SCE&G ratepayers.

The PSC failed to cite any legal justification to let SCE&G recover costs from ratepayers after it abandoned the project.

Here is what the legislature could do while it considers deregulating the system:

• Set higher qualifications for the PSC and have the governor nominate them with Senate consent to make them accountable.

• Replace all commissioners. They failed SCE&G ratepayers and the public. Do we need more evidence that this bunch is completely incompetent?

• As stewards of Santee Cooper, state officials should go after SCE&G for what it did to the value of the taxpayer-owned utility, to find out what we can recover if it is sold and the potential longterm obligations its ratepayers will probably be stuck with.

• Give the Office of Regulatory Staff sharper teeth to protect the ratepayers. The PSC has routinely ignored them.

Do our lawmakers have the will to do what must be done?

- JerryBellune