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Wrong way to fix the PSC

It is good for Florida legislators to be concerned over the great and growing power of the governor's office, but what's wrong at the Public Service Commission is more their fault than Jeb Bush's, and a Senate committee's prescribed remedy would make it worse.

Yes, Bush appointed the PSC members who sometimes act like employees of the power and telephone companies they are supposed to regulate. But it was the Legislature that nominated them. The governor's choices are restricted to a list sent him by the Public Service Nominating Council, an obscure eight-member panel appointed by legislative leaders who more often than not have intended to please the utilities.

The bill approved by a Senate committee this month would keep the nominating council and create a new panel of House members and senators to make the actual PSC appointments. Nothing about this guarantees that the new committee would choose more wisely than the governor. History forewarns of the opposite: The Legislature has been a tool of the utilities far more often than governors have been. The Legislature, moreover, is for many reasons even less accountable to the public.

The constitutional doctrine for the Senate proposal is that ratemaking and regulation are legislative functions that the lawmakers may either delegate or perform themselves. But imagine the parade of horribles if the Legislature were directly in the business of licensing and regulating banks and insurance companies. That should not be the case with telephone, gas, water or power companies, either.

It would be better to abolish the nominating council and give the governor undiluted responsibility for the qualifications and ethics of the PSC members he appoints. This would not be a blank check, because PSC appointees would remain subject to Senate confirmation. The next best alternative would be to put the governor and Cabinet in charge of the PSC, just as they are now with regard to insurance and banking. But in either case, Florida needs to rid itself of the nominating council.

One praiseworthy feature of the Senate bill would ban any industry figure from lobbying the PSC for two years after being found to be involved in a PSC member's ethics violation. But the bill also specifically allows PSC members to be wined and dined at industry-hosted events so long as everybody attending gets the same freebies or cut rates. PSC members should not be indulging, period.

[Last modified February 21, 2005, 01:32:19]