The taxpayer-owned utility’s records show that of 12 board seats, another seat is vacant and 7 expired members are still serving.

This raises questions about who’s running Santee Cooper, a power supplier to Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative members in Lexington County.

A new law to reform Santee Cooper was pushed by lawmakers after they couldn’t decide to sell the debt-burdened utility.

By law, the governor appoints the 12 voting members of the board.

A new law passed last month reduces their terms to 4 years from 7 and limits their tenure to 3 consecutive full terms.

But the new law didn’t change the provision allowing board members to continue serving past their terms.

The new law also doesn’t lessen the power of the State Regulation of Public Utilities Review Committee (PURC), which determines whether to qualify the governor’s appointees.

If found qualified, candidates go before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate.

We have repeatedly pointed out that the PURC exerts considerable control over the regulation of utilities. Appointments to the PURC are controlled by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Luke Rankin, R-Horry, and House speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington.

In April, Gov. Henry McMaster nominated former US attorney Peter McCoy to be the next Santee Cooper board chairman.

The utility has been without a permanent chairman since the end of 2017 after Leighton Lord resigned after Santee Cooper and SC Electric & Gas abandoned a failed $9 billion nuclear project.

That failure cost Mid-Carolina and SCE&G customers more than $2 billion in rate increases.

McMaster in 2019 nominated candidates for 3 other board seats, though none of them came to a vote of the full Senate.

We asked PURC lawyer Heather Anderson if the PURC screened McMaster’s 2019 appointees but did not receive a response.