On August 11, 2015, Teresa Arnold and I held a press conference in the Charleston Marriott where we combined the efforts of AARP-SC and the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce to attack the Base Load Review Act (BLRA). Today you are hearing a lot about the BLRA as it relates to skyrocketing SCE&G electricity rates due to the construction of the now abandoned nuclear plants in Fairfield County. But things didn’t have to be as bad as they are today.

Two years ago our message was very clear. The BLRA was passed in 2007 to reduce the cost to ratepayers for the construction of a nuclear power plants. But as SCE&G used this statute for building two nuclear plants in Fairfield County, it soon became obvious that the cost of those plants was out of control and the ratepayers were being hammered with rate hikes that had reached 17% at that time under the BLRA.

The Public Service Commission (PSC) appeared to have lost control of the construction costs that were billions over budget and more rate increases were on the horizon. So Teresa and I called for an independent analysis of how the BLRA had actually performed for the consumers. We believed that the PSC needed this information for future rate hike requests and the Legislature needed this information to consider amending the BLRA to better protect the ratepayers.

My statement that day raised the issues that are at the heart of the problem with the BLRA. “Wouldn’t it be more prudent for increased costs due to schedule delays and overruns be the responsibility of the SCE&G shareholders that can demand accountability from the company? Is it really prudent to reward SCE&G with more profits as a result of higher costs from the delays and overruns on a project it controls?

As Cindi Scoppe’s editorial below clearly states, our state Legislature passed a law that perversely incentivized SCE&G to not keep its nuclear construction project on budget or on schedule. The lawmakers didn’t realize the mistake at first but the flashing warning lights have been going off for some time.

Since that August 11, 2015, press conference, the PSC has approved SCE&G to go over budget by another $1.5 billion to build the now failed nuclear plants.

Had the Legislature and PSC listened to the calls for change coming from that Charleston hotel conference room two years ago, just maybe our financial hole today wouldn’t be so deep.
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The State
August 18, 2017

How ‘waste not, want not’ became ‘spend more, profit more’

By Cindi Ross Scoppe, Associate Editor

IT’S GOT to be one of the toughest decisions we ever face: When do we bail?

When do we acknowledge that a project we’ve invested in — whether it’s waiting for the train to clear the intersection instead of taking the long way around it, or sticking with an unhappy marriage, or building a $10 billion, now $20 billion, nuclear reactor project — is a bust?

When do we decide it’s going to cost more to stick with the project than to swallow our losses and walk away?

Imagine you’re the chief executive officer of SCANA, the parent company of SCE&G. You’re building the first of a new generation of nuclear reactors, and almost from the start, costs are higher and progress is slower than projected. But delays and cost overruns are a standard part of any big construction project, and they’re even more likely in this case, because it’s been decades since anyone tried to build a nuclear reactor in this country.

So you don’t panic. Instead, you tell regulators the cost and time projections have increased, and ask their permission to proceed. The state Office of Regulatory Staff raises questions about some of your costs, so you reduce them, and your modification sails through the state Public Service Commission.

Then it happens again. And again. And again.

At some point, you have to realize that you can’t keep digging the hole ever deeper. But when? As long as you stick with the project, there’s a chance that it will work out in the long run. The moment you quit, you lock in the losses.

And what would motivate you to make that gut-wrenching decision?

The more you spend, the more stockholders profit, because they’re guaranteed a 10.25 percent return on investment. So you have no incentive to keep costs down. Just the opposite.

You’re a private-sector, regulated utility, so your job is not to protect ratepayers. They’re stuck with you, and besides, it’s the government’s job to look out for them. Your job is to protect your stockholders. And you’re doing that. Magnificently. That’s why you and your executive team keep getting those huge bonuses.

There’s this law, the Base Load Review Act, that your team convinced the Legislature to pass in 2007. It says your stockholders won’t suffer the consequences of your decisions, no matter how much you go over budget.

In fact, the more you spend, the more they profit, because they’re guaranteed a 10.25 percent return on investment. So you have no incentive to keep costs down. Just the opposite.

You have no incentive to get out unless things get so bad that it would be “imprudent” — an important legal term that can yank that profit out of your fingers — to continue. Like, say, if your prime contractor goes belly up. And your 45 percent partner bails on you.

Until that happens, invest more, profit more.

When you add this bizarre economic incentive to the natural human inclination toward inertia, it’s almost impossible not to keep sending money on the project.

When you add this bizarre economic incentive to the natural human inclination toward inertia, it’s almost impossible not to keep sending money on the project. More than you should. Longer than you should.

That situation is not SCANA’s fault, at least not mostly. It’s the fault of our Legislature, which created that disincentive to keep costs down. Or pull the plug.

To be clear: I am not defending SCANA’s decision to allow costs to skyrocket or to stick with this project for so long, or to paint such a rosy picture of it for so long. I’m not defending SCANA’s decision not to make it clear from the start that the projections were all unrealistic because all construction projections are unrealistic. I am suggesting that in order to assign blame and, more importantly, find solutions, we need to understand the obligations that were violated.

Corporations do not have an obligation to anyone except their stockholders. It is government that has an obligation to all of us. And doubly so, I would argue, when government grants a monopoly, which forces us to do business with a corporation whose interests are very different than our own.

Santee Cooper does not have stockholders. Santee Cooper is an agency of the state of South Carolina. Santee Cooper’s job is to serve the people of South Carolina.

Now, Santee Cooper is an entirely different matter. Santee Cooper does not have stockholders. Santee Cooper is an agency of the state of South Carolina. Santee Cooper’s job is to serve the people of South Carolina. Santee Cooper failed us. Miserably.

There are a number of reasons for Santee Cooper’s failure, and I promise I am eventually going to explore them more fully, but one is painfully obvious: Santee Cooper didn’t have to justify its decisions to the Office of Regulatory Staff or the Public Service Commission. It merely had to justify its decisions to … itself.

Santee Cooper’s president — who is also very well compensated, though not nearly so well as the SCANA president — merely had to convince his bosses, the board of directors, that what he was doing was OK. And his bosses? Well, the governor can’t remove them, even when they make lousy decisions.

In both cases, it was the Legislature that created the situation that allowed — even invited — the failure to be bigger than it might otherwise have been.

And in both cases, it is the Legislature that must reduce or eliminate the disincentives to public-focused decision-making, so that someone is looking out for the interests of the utility ratepayers, who are, after all, the public.

SCE&G crisis might have been less severe

How ‘waste not, want not’ became ‘spend more, profit more’

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