A Times Editorial

Limited terms

Mixed up in a tax fraud trial, the nominating chairman for the Florida Public Service Commission should be released from his duties.

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 30, 2000

Andy Blank, the power behind the throne at the Florida Public Service Commission, must have done something to offend Joe Arnall. If that's so, the retiring legislator from Jacksonville isn't saying. But in one of his last acts, Arnall brought the curtain down on Blank's seemingly infinite career as chairman of the unsalaried council that nominates PSC members. Under a new law Arnall steered to passage, none of the council's nine members can serve more than one term.

Moreover, the three appointed by the Senate president and the three chosen by the House speaker will now serve "at the pleasure" of those officials.

Some in Tallahassee see that as a hint to Senate President Toni Jennings to dump Blank before his third four-year term expires next year. She says she won't, but she should, if only because of the cloud that has been over Blank since his name surfaced last year in the tax fraud trial of former House Speaker Bo Johnson and his wife, Judi. Archive America Inc., a Miami records storage company that Blank owns, gave $142,500 to Mrs. Johnson. Blank's refusal to testify left it a mystery what work she did for the money.

Another consequence of serving at pleasure, unfortunately, could be to predispose council members, even more than now, to load up the nominating lists with legislators, ex-legislators or people secretly sponsored by utilities the PSC regulates.

This problem is at the core of what's wrong with continuing to regard the PSC as an arm of the Legislature. Though the governor appoints PSC members, he can choose only from lists of three people whom the nominating council recommends for each vacancy, and he doesn't select any of the nominating council members.

If the PSC plays roll-over-Rover for some telephone, electric or gas company, there's no one to take the heat. That burden ought to be the governor's, but it can't be unless he appoints PSC members without the interference of legislators or their council. If it takes a constitutional amendment to get there, so be it.

Meanwhile, the anti-Blank law, if that's what it was, takes effect July 1, giving him another bite of the apple. The council nominated three people last week to succeed PSC Chairman Joe Garcia, who is leaving to become executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation.

We pass no judgment except to note that all three are from Miami-Dade: Braulio Baez, an attorney who is Garcia's former assistant; William Charles Dunn, an engineer; and Arnold Velazquez, an engineer and real estate broker.

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