Analysis

JerryBellune@yahoo.com

SC Electric & Gas ratepayers should not expect much else from lawmakers.

Last year, they held hearings and amended the Base Load Review Act that cost ratepayers $2 billion.

The sale of the Lexington County-based utility to Dominion Energy last week may cost ratepayers another $2 billion in the costs of abandoning SCE&G’s failed nuclear project.

For state lawmakers, this ends what they can do to protect 727,000 of their ratepaying constituents.

For Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey and Minority Leader Nikki Setzler, both representing Lexington County taxpayers, the big issue this year will be finding a buyer for SCE&G’s partner in the failed project.

That partner is taxpayer-owned Santee Cooper which provides power to Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative members here.

Like SCE&G, Santee Cooper is saddled with billions of dollars in nuclear debt.

Massey and Setzler told journalists at a SC Press Association briefing last week that they see no clear path for dealing with Santee Cooper’s billions in debt.

Santee Cooper’s board and managers have run up millions of dollars in severance pay commitments for themselves and former CEO Lonnie Carter.

One solution may be to find a privately-owned buyer, which Gov. Henry Mc-Master wants to do.

McMaster’s new board chair Charlie Condon, a former SC attorney general, found that Santee Cooper executives have paid $850,000 to attorneys to keep them from being criminally prosecuted.

Mid-Carolina members in Lexington County may feel somewhat better off than their neighbors who are captive SCE&G ratepayers.

Santee Cooper’s rate hikes over the last 10 years have been far less costly than those the SC Public Service Commission allowed SCE&G to charge theirs.

What lawmakers do not want to talk about is the state’s out-of-date regulated monopoly utility system.

Power companies in Texas compete for customers’ business. That competition forces utilities to operate more efficiently and effectively to control costs and deliver at lower rates.

In South Carolina, the PSC members are the only ones a utility needs to convince it is operating prudently to justify rate hikes.

PSC critics say that system has led to the highest electricity and water rates in the country.