For those on the campaign trail heading up to the midterms, there was one no-brainer target: monolithic power giant Duke Energy.
It didn't matter whether you were a Republican or Democrat. You promised to do something about the utility's Mr. Burns-esque billing practices, that you'd be the first to file a bill repealing a law allowing Duke and other companies to charge Florida customers for power plants that will never get built.
Today, a Republican and a Democrat (Reps. Chris Latvala and Amanda Murphy, respectively) — both from Tampa Bay — jointly filed a bill in the state House that would repeal the nuclear cost recovery fee and refund "all costs collected…that remain unspent on July1, 2015" to Duke's roughly 1.7 million customers by June 30, 2016, which is also the day the 2006 bill would be repealed.
“Floridians are tired of being taxed for projects that will never come to fruition,” Rep. Amanda Murphy said in a story posted earlier on SaintPetersBlog.
Read the bill's full text here (don't worry, it's short).
Democratic State Rep. Dwight Dudley (D-St. Petersburg), who was railing against Duke Energy before it was cool, says it's about time.
He says he's "screamed about it" for the past two years, when similar bills didn't even get a committee assignment. His frustration led him to launch an effort to get signatures that would allow a constitutional amendment to repeal the tax.
“I'd love to see it pass because certainly having to get a million signatures is a daunting and challenging thing."
But he's not entirely sure the bill, HB67, will go anywhere, given how easy it is for a bill to die — and especially given the millions of dollars Duke and other power companies have given to various campaigns and political action committees.
Dudley says if it were up to him, the bill, if passed, would immediately repeal the law.
“Why wait?" he asks. "Why make people more miserable longer?…Why prolong people's suffering?”
We'll keep you posted on when — or whether — the bill goes anywhere.
This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2014.