Lawmakers, business leaders, environmental groups and the solar industry are criticizing state regulators.

The Public Service Commission’s hiring of a consultant with deep ties to utilities has many upset.

“It is critical that the PSC be totally transparent in how and why it selected Pegasus as a qualified, independent consultant,” said SC Small Business Chamber CEO Frank Knapp.

“Otherwise neither the public nor legislators will trust that the PSC was acting fairly and impartially in the upcoming hearings.

Knapp said, “The only reason this information came out now was because the Office of Regulatory Staff was concerned about inadvertent communication between the consulting company they hired and whoever the PSC hired.”

Had ORS Director Nanette Edwards failed to ask the PSC about their consultant this would not have come up, making it harder to cancel, Knapp said.

The watchdog SC Policy Council had similar concerns. Public trust in the PSC has fallen since the SC Electric & Gas nuclear fiasco, said Rick Brundrett of the Policy Council.

“It is a reminder that regulators don’t answer to the public,” Brundrett said.

“They answer to lawmakers, specifically to a legislatively-dominated board which controls appointments and performs PSC members’ annual reviews.

“In the years since the nuclear project collapsed, lawmakers have examined and discussed reforms for nearly every aspect of utility governance – even spending large sums of taxpayer dollars on consultants to advise them on various issues – but they have consistently refused to examine the fact that the utility industry has answered to them all along, in a structure designed to maximize legislative interference while shielding all parties from accountability to ratepayers.”