To: Members of the South Carolina State Senate
From: S.C. Club for Growth
Date: February 11, 2021
Re: Santee Cooper can’t reform its way out

After House passage of a bill that would authorize the General Assembly to sell Santee Cooper and also require reform/increased oversight of the state-owned utility, and as the Senate moves to consider Santee Cooper’s future, S.C. Club for Growth stands by our unwavering support for selling Santee Cooper. We oppose the idea that the debt-riddled, broken, bureaucratic, government-owned utility can truly be reformed.

In fact, unless Santee Cooper’s electric and water rates are set by the independent S.C. Public Service Commission, there can be no real reform. And it is our understanding that the billions of dollars of bonded indebtedness that Santee Cooper has is predicated on rates only being set by the Santee Cooper Board of Directors, which has no independent oversight.

Reform without independent oversight is fake reform.

Santee Cooper had years to reform itself. In recent years—only due to legislative pressure—the state agency wrote its own reform plan. Neither that plan, nor the others it subsequently wrote have come to fruition. Allowing Santee Cooper more time to “fix itself” will be a fruitless endeavor.

No amount of reform will get Santee Cooper customers off the hook for its billions of debt, fix its culture of secrecy, or get our state out of the electric utility business!

Santee Cooper cannot reform its way out of debt.

• No amount of reform can wipe away the nearly $7 billion dollars Santee Cooper owes
• As it stands, three generations of Santee Cooper customers will pay for Santee Cooper’s mistakes
• A sale to NextEra Energy will eliminate the nuclear debt and not charge customers for the two failed V.C. Summer nuclear units

Santee Cooper cannot reform its way out of its culture of mismanagement

• Santee Cooper is well-known for its culture of secrecy and mismanagement that spans multiple CEOs
• South Carolina’s good old boy network has benefitted from Santee Cooper’s lack of transparency during its entire existence
• Santee Cooper should play by the SAME rules as investor-owned utility companies. But they don’t have to, so they won’t. Unless Santee Cooper’s rates are regulated by the Public Service Commission, there can be no real reform of the utility
• Santee Cooper has been mismanaged for years—from the failed V.C. Summer units 2 & 3, to the Pee Dee coal plant, to the ill-conceived and expensive gypsum contract, to more recently taking out even more debt, to just last week calling for even MORE debt to be taken out later this year

You should not reform your conservative principles.

• Voting to keep the state in the electric utility business violates our core conservative principles
• Santee Cooper shouldn’t be an exception to the rule—electric utilities don’t belong in the hands of state bureaucrats
• Vote to SELL Santee Cooper! Only through private ownership will Santee Cooper ever have proper, independent regulatory oversight and not be a political influence
• It’s time to stick to your principles and SELL Santee Cooper!