Columbia, SC (WLTX) - The South Carolina House of Representatives passed a bill that reforms the state-owned utility Santee Cooper.
On Tuesday afternoon the House passed H.4376 in response to the fallout at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Plant.
The bill creates a rate reduction and stabilization fund with the money from the Toshiba settlement. Santee Cooper received $895 million from that lawsuit. The money would go to paying off the nuclear debt from the two nuclear reactors.
The bill also removes the entire Santee Cooper board, allowing the Governor to appoint members of the board with Senate confirmation. Board members would serve for four years. Currently they serve seven year terms.
A committee, made up of the Speaker of the House, Senate President Pro Tempore, House and Senate Majority & Minority leaders, the Governor and two other appointees, will serve to hear business proposals for the sale of the state-owned utility.
Representative Peter McCoy of Charleston County says there have been too many side deals without the General Assembly's knowledge.
"I'm tired of it being behind closed doors," says Rep. McCoy, R-Charleston. "It's made behind closed doors and it's pushed out here in the lobby. The citizens of South Carolina and the ratepayers of South Carolina deserve better."
The nine-person committee would bring all of the proposals to the forefront.
Representative Russell Ott says they've created a clear path for moving forward if the sale of Santee Cooper actually happens.
"We really haven't been able to accept any formal proposals because we haven't said what we actually want to put up for sale yet, if anything will be up for sale," says Rep. Ott, D-Calhoun. "So, what we did today is we formalized the process. We've laid out a path so that there can be formal discussions in the public that everyone can see, with plenty of transparency. If there are utilities that are serious about coming in and making an offer for Santee Cooper then we've provided a way for them to actually do that."
This is the sixth and final bill that the House Utility Ratepayer Protection Committee created following the abandonment of construction at V.C. Summer by both SCE&G and Santee Cooper.
Ott and McCoy agreed that employees of SCANA and Santee Cooper are left on the front lines, paying for a crime they didn't commit.
"These are not the folks to blame," said McCoy. "They have never been the folks to blame...It's the greed at the top. It's the executives at the top that have really put this, in my aspect, into a criminal realm."
Now, the bill goes to the Senate, where the other five bills are currently waiting to be heard.