Gov. Bush says Florida can wait
Gov. Jeb Bush, formerly a staunch supporter of restructuring Florida’s electric utility industry, has changed course and said the state should not move quickly on deregulation. There is no immediate energy crisis in Florida, Bush now says, and deregulation can wait until state lawmakers, utility companies and outside power providers agree on how it should work.
"I just don't think there's a sense of urgency to this," he commented in an interview with the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group. "We were not in a position like California where we had to move quickly. Thankfully, that's not the case, because dealing with crises doesn't yield the best policy result. We're in a good position to thoughtfully pursue the idea of restructuring."
The idea of deregulation is to allow customers to be able to choose their electric company, much like they can now shop around for long-distance or cellular phone service. The argument is that a free market will yield lower rates for consumers in the long run.
Bush pushed the idea of deregulation to the forefront when he created a study commission last year to look at the state's energy needs over the next 20 years. At the group's first meeting in September, Bush told the group, "Inaction is not an option here."
But California’s energy shortage, including rolling blackouts last winter, cast a pall over deregulation. State lawmakers gave a tepid response this spring to interim recommendations from the Energy 2020 Study Commission, which outlined how Florida could take the first step toward open competition among electric companies.
Those on the study commission charged that Florida was facing a potential shortfall in available energy and it needed to create ways to generate more power, including allowing out-of-state companies to build and operate power plants here. But now Bush says the state has plenty of power and more on the way, giving Florida time to decide how it should proceed.
"We are permitting increased capacity. It's being built," he said. "We have a reserve margin of 20 percent. Our utility costs are below the national average. We’re proceeding, but with caution, to make sure we don't have unintended consequences."
Source: Sun Tallahassee Bureau, Aug. 21, 2001
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