Newsletter
June 21, 2018
ACTION ALERT!!!
Legislature Meets Next Week on SCE&G Rates and Regulatory Reform
The SCE&G/Santee Cooper nuclear plants debacle that has dominated the news and legislature this year has resulted in this….NOTHING!
We have one last chance to tell our legislators to quit talking and making excuses while allowing SCE&G to continue to rake in $37 million a month in higher rates and failing to pass needed utility regulatory reform so that consumers are the top priority not utility companies.
The legislature is returning next week to consider and approve needed legislation. It’s time for you to contact them.
H.4379 – Establishes a Consumer Advocate who will look out for ratepayers when the utilities are seeking to increase rates and clarifies that the mission of the energy regulatory agency in SC (the Office of Regulatory Staff) is 100% focused on protecting ratepayers & consumers (not the financial integrity of the utilities).
H.4375 – Empowers the Public Service Commission to determine if SCE&G acted prudently with its construction decisions while withholding critical information from the public.
S.954 – Sets a firm time schedule for the Public Service Commission to determine whether SCE&G electric rates should be reduced by 13% or 18%.
CONTACT your Representative and Senator now! Tell them to support each of these bills: H.4379, H.4375 and S.954.Â
Get them passed or don’t come home! That’s your message.
Send an email to your Senator by using this link.
Send an email to your House Representative by using this link.
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Opinion: Corporate Tax Cuts Are Unpopular With Voters
Inside Sources
June 20, 2018
This month, an NBC/WSJ poll of registered voters in swing congressional House districts found that a candidate’s support for the tax law passed in December might cost them in this November’s election.
Forty-two percent of voters were less likely to vote for a candidate who supported the tax law compared to 36 percent who said that they were more likely. That difference might seem small but in a highly competitive House race, it’s huge.
But it’s not at all surprising. On June 22, it will have been six months since Congress passed this hasty and ill-considered tax law. With each passing month, the truth about that law is sinking in:
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GOP oil-drilling “ransom” calls into question real purpose of expanding offshore drilling
President Trump has defended his desire to open all the country’s federal offshore waters to drilling for oil by saying that the United State must have energy dominance over all other nations.
But a recent Republican proposal in the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources would allow states to opt out of offshore drilling by paying “a lost production fee” to the federal government for depriving American taxpayers the revenue from oil drilling leases, according to Committee Chair Paul Gosar (R-Arizona).
At the Committee’s June 14, 2018, hearing on this proposal Mayor Ben Cahoon of Nags Head, NC, exposed the contradiction between President Trump’s justification for more offshore oil drilling and the GOP proposal.
“If we are going to have an energy policy and we are going to decide that we need the oil, why are we letting states then take some of that oil back off the table in exchange for a payment?”, said Mayor Cahoon.
Why indeed?