When Gainesville voters hit the ballot boxes November 2018, they will be deciding on who makes final decisions for their utility company.
Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill Tuesday that calls for a 2018 referendum vote on whether an independent board or the City Commission governs Gainesville Regional Utilities.
Currently, Gainesville’s seven-person commission makes the final calls on GRU.
“That’s the structure that’s been in place since the beginning of time for GRU,” At-Large Commissioner Helen Warren said. “It’s always been a city government oversight.”
Warren said Scott’s decision may have come, in part, from public unrest over the City Commission’s troubles with the GRU’s Utility Advisory Board, an independent governing body that makes recommendations to the commission regarding utility decisions. The board does not have the power to make final calls.
Warren said she feels confident that the current system works best.
“If people don’t like the decisions of the city commissioners related to the utility company — or anything for that sake — they vote them out,” Warren said.
Scott initially vetoed a similar bill in 2016 because of a clause that would have given members of the independent board an annual salary of $18,000, Warren said. When the bill came back to him this year, she said he likely had fewer reasons to deny it and caved to Republican partisanship in supporting it.
“Maybe he wasn’t fully 100 percent in favor of it, but I think he finally flipped over to the red party line,” she said.
Warren said she was unsure of whether Scott’s decision would impact the buyout.
“I want this to work out with the best intentions that it’s going to be a win for GRU and the customers,” she said.
"Governor Scott believes Gainesville voters can decide how to best manage GRU," said Lauren Schenone, the press secretary for Gov. Scott's office, in an email.
For District-IV Commissioner Adrian Hayes-Santos, Scott’s decision was purely partisan.
“Rick Scott gave in to the special interests and Tallahassee Republicans that are pushing this takeover of our community owned utility,” Hayes-Santos wrote in an email.
Hayes-Santos said he is concerned about Scott’s decision impacting the city’s buyout of Gainesville Renewable Energy Center, a privately owned biomass plant.
The City Commission and GRU have been moving forward in recent months to purchase GREC so that it may exit a multibillion-dollar contract with the plant and reduce electric bills for GRU customers by about 10 percent, according to Alligator archives.
If the contract holds, GRU would wind up paying GREC $2.1 billion over the next 27 years, said Lauren Munsey, a GRU spokesperson.
Mayor Lauren Poe said negotiations are “nearing the halfway point,” and the city is waiting to hear back from GREC on its asset purchase agreement, which details the city’s $750 million buyout offer it sent May 10.
Poe said GRU requests assistance in energy production from GREC on an as-needed basis and that the plant has been a reliable partner.
The buyout is an opportunity for the city to have more direct control over its energy use and direction in terms of climate change, he said.
“We’ve had a lot of community members demand immediate action due to the president’s desire to pull out of the Paris accords,” Poe said.
But Hayes-Santos now worries Scott’s decision may raise the price buying out GREC even further, weakening the chances of an agreement going through.
“This special interest bill will cause uncertainties in the bond market resulting in higher interest rates which will increase the cost of a GREC purchase and result in higher utility rates for GRU customers,” Hayes-Santos said.
Contact David Hoffman at dhoffman@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter: @hoffdavid123.
