Perkins has alleged in a lawsuit that Pitts led a rogue group of Matrix employees who undertook work on FPL's behalf that he only learned about after Pitts departed work worth millions in fees. And the job was to come with one key hitch: To accept it, Dennis would have to leave his council position. That effort culminated with a Matrix employee signing an option agreement to purchase a controlling stake in The Capitolist in September 2019, the records show. Top executives at utility giant Florida Power & Light worked closely with the political consultants who orchestrated a scheme to promote spoiler candidates in three key state Senate elections last year, according to documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel. The utility company also contributes to many Democrats and to the Florida Democratic Party. He is also suing Perkins, alleging defamation and extortion. FPL deployed lobbyists to the capital, while Matrix hired private investigators to dig for dirt and had operatives funnel dark money and order attack ads. An analyst at Seaport Global, a capital-markets firm, said recent reporting on FPL has "made us reassess FPL's risks" and that the research firm has "grown uncomfortable" with the "growing media scrutiny of FPLs lobbying practices against distributed solar and retail choice (deregulation), among others. He is a former federal prosecutor with experience in public corruption cases.. Heffley suggested that he could send it via email today or we will be at the Capitol next week., Holley declined to provide an electronic version and offered to drop it off in person the following week. Landlords would be able to sell cheap rooftop solar power directly to their tenants bypassing FPL and its monopoly on electricity. Added Patino-Echeverri: The No. FPL emerged from that episode empty handed, a particularly punishing outcome in the world of investor-owned utilities, which are locked in a rat race to grow bigger or die. FPL has been ensnaredin public scandal over aggressive political tactics that Florida newspapers have laid bare since late last year. But FPL was fixated on JEA; buying it would lock Florida's entire East Coast into FPL's service territory, another bold expansion of FPL's power. And Burgess himself seemed to recognize it was an unlikely proposal, lamenting that "they are such douchebag newspaper people they added the poison pill to prevent ahostil [sic] takeover, even if it costs them hundreds of millions in stock value" (it's not clear in his email what the alleged"poison pill" is supposed to have been). Political editor Emily L. Mahoney will send you a rundown on local, state and national politics coverage every Thursday. Note: This story has been updated to correctly reflect Pimentel's prior roles. A dark money group associated with Matrix LLC mailed attack ads against South Miami mayor Philip Stoddard to area residents. Also, after reports that an outside FPL consultant had tailed a Florida Times-Union journalist who reported critically on the utility, Silagy sat down with reporters to deny that FPL had ever directed anyone to monitor him. The CEO of the biggest power company in the US had a problem. This plant has been part of the solution.. I just want to reach out and see if I could get an electronic copy of the net metering bill so I can put it into drafting.. She likened it to comparing emissions from a personal car used once a week and a city bus that takes many trips. "JEA is broken," the group boasted on its website, where it posted Times-Union coverage of the utility's involvement in an over-budget, behind-schedule nuclear project in Georgia. Currently, 5,779,202 consumers receive their electricity from the company. More: Solar advocates push for last-minute changes to net metering bills, Solar center: FPL blows up its last coal-fired power plant; announces plans for its newest solar center, Electric bill goes up: Your next Florida Power & Light electric bill is going way up. Ricardo Rossello,. He added that the company would soon challenge the complaint and call for its dismissal. We're advancing solar energy in Florida and you can too with our solar programs. The company is making renewable energy investments, including: Patino-Echeverri said the utility industry as a whole is making strides to make its plants more efficient. Ricardo Rossello, governor of Puerto Rico, in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, as power was being restored to a neighborhood in February 2018, five months after Hurricane Irma struck the area. Knowing this may inspire consumers to seek out energy-efficient solutions in their own homes like LED lighting, efficient air conditioners or improving insulation and be more aware of the electricity they use, how they use it and perhaps use less. Florida now has the second-largest solar workforce in the country about 11,000 direct jobs and 31,000 indirect ones, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. And then apparently, somewhere along the way, Jeff and Joe got sideways, Silagy said. 'Off-the-books political strategy':FPL consultants secretly took command, control of Florida news website, reports say, Nate Monroe:Surveillance records at the heart of a tangled mess between FPL and a former consultant. He has denied the allegations. As their feud escalated, internal documents started to arrive in reporters email inboxes from unknown sources. Just in December, the Public Service Commission approved a request from FPL to recover costs from customers due to a 10% increase in natural gas prices. Justin Vandenbroeck, the president of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association who also owns an Orlando-based solar installation company, said the solar industry consists mostly of independently-owned small businesses. This particular power plant ranked in the top third,alongwithcoal-powered plants, in thelist of 100 power plants across the country that belched out the most carbon dioxide in 2020, according to thereport by Find Energy. Today, FPL said, two-thirds of its power comes from natural gas, followed by nearly 20% nuclear, 4% solar and almost 3% coal, which comes from a plant NextEra partially owns out of state. Responding to dark money controversy, NextEra did internal investigation into FPL. Skeptics of that plan notably included the Office of Public Counsel, thewatchdog group that represents consumers before the Public Service Commission butwas thought to have been more friendly to utility interests after the installation of a longtime industry lobbyist in 2021. I just wanted to check in and see if you had any follow up information or language in regards to the net metering bill you discussed with Senator Bradley., Holley replied eight minutes later: I do. Out of this, the FPL executive told Burgess, according to the Herald. The utility doesnt want to be associated with this campaign.. Hours later, a story like the one the executive pitched appeared on The Capitolist. DeSantis, who is attempting to build a populist profile ahead of a presidential run in 2024,has turned on FPL, having used his veto pen earlier this year to kill one of the utility's highest legislative priorities a controversial bill that would have limited the growth of the residential rooftop solar industryin Florida. Otherwise, DeSantis has been largely friendly to NextEra and FPLs legislative priorities, granting the utility $2.75 million in tax breaks on speculative green hydrogen, signing legislation that gave FPL permission to charge customers tens of billions of dollars for burying lines, signing legislation preventing gas bans that would have aided Florida City Gas, and also signing legislation that forced the resignation of utility critic JR Kelly from his leadership of the Office of Public Counsel, which represents ratepayers in rate cases. Duke has 2 million customers, followed by TECO with 800,000 and then many other smaller utilities. Florida is one of 47 states that allow households and businesses that produce power to sell it back to the grid at a set rate. NextEra Energy said its political committee did not make its contribution to Bradleys campaign with an expectation of favor.. Two days later, Florida Division of Elections records show, Florida Power & Lights parent company, NextEra Energy, gave $10,000 to Bradleys political committee, Women Building the Future. At the Birmingham office where Pitts and the others had worked, Perkins said he found a backup server that appeared to have been beaten with something. Bradley filed the bill in November. The utility also launched a series of solar power investments, including the development of batter storage. So they opted instead for Mayor Stoddards electoral defeat and changing the makeup of the board, according to a 2018 memo from Dan Newman, a Matrix contractor who was similarly involved in the campaign against Rodrguez. But utility experts have testified to the Florida Public Service Commission that rooftop solar in the state could grow at a rate of 39 percent a year until 2025 if Floridas current net metering system is left in place. An FPL spokesman, nonetheless, took issue with the Find Energy reportciting concerns over a general legal disclaimer on the website and the use of a misleading statistic of overall emissions rather than the emissions rate. January 25, 2023 Switching from oil or coal to natural gas is a very important step, but thats not enough, she said, adding that carbon capture, utilization and storage technology must be considerationsto further reduce emissions. $2.75 million in tax breaks on speculative green hydrogen, tens of billions of dollars for burying lines, 2018 state senate race in Gainesville, FL, secured a deal to freeze FPL rates in 2005 as Attorney General, opposed FPLs $1.3 billion rate increase in 2009, calling the utility out for raising its rates on Floridians, largest donation FPL had ever made at the time, Utility front groups spending on disinformation advertising. Records from the Florida Senate show that Florida Power & Light drafted the bill, and lobbyist John Holley delivered it to Bradley, R-Fleming Island, and Florida Power & Lights parent company followed up with a $10,000 contribution to her political committee. 0:00. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become. The firm later recovered more than a million files, according to Perkins, who said they reveal years of hidden, shadow work in Florida. Forgive me for being unserious at a time when companies like Florida Power & Light (FPL)the nation's largest utilitykeep racking up scandals, but it's kind of hard to keep track of the. What people may not realize is that public opinion is very much in our favor, said Bryan Jacob of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. FPL has also said an internal investigation ordered by its board of directors cleared the company's employees of any wrongdoing; it has also refused to provide copies of that investigation. Its the right thing to do for our state.. Perkins claims he only became aware of this work after he encountered what appeared to be a damaged hard drive in Pitts' former office and hired an IT team to extract the remains. That same year, a consultant told the Jacksonville City Council that taking JEA privatewould "likelyrepresent the largest and most complex" transaction of its kind in the United States. The warm light racesacross a 600-mile expanse of land and coast before finally brightening the Perdido River in Escambia County on Florida's western border. NextEra officials say that investigation is close to completion. DeSantis appointees also allowed FPL to pocket over $1 billion in corporate tax savings instead of passing those savings on to customers. Last June, Florida Power & Light spokesperson David Reuter wrote that the initial review had exonerated the company: "This detailed report found no evidence of illegality or wrongdoing on the part of FPL or any of its employees." As a result of the current system, my constituents are being forced to subsidize the decisions of neighbors in other counties who are in a position to be able to put these expensive systems on their homes, Bradley said. Records show FPL trusted Matrix operatives with millions, including giving $14m to a single Matrix-run nonprofit in 2018 alone. Going through those tens of thousands ofrecords, he said, alerted him to the extent of work Pitts performed without his knowledge. The charity was a front established by a state representative. One-tenth of 1percent of the power comes from oil. "The way I look at it is it's a little earlier than I would have hoped Eric would have wanted to do it.". Many of the documents have since been verified by additional reporting, public records or Perkins himself. That growth has the utilities, and legislators, worried. Florida Power and Light is launching a webpage dedicated to attacking the Miami Herald specifically Tallahassee bureau chief Mary Ellen Klas for its "biased" reporting on proposed . The job was to be with a shell nonprofit created by Matrix employees that supported marijuana decriminalization and, on its face, had no connection to FPL. In all races, the Republican won the election. He said what he found was deeply disturbing. We simply believe rooftop solar customers should pay the full cost of this investment, McGrath said. However, those policies are coming under fire as utilities become increasingly concerned about how the growth of distributed solar energy affects their bottom line. One of Matrixs oldest clients is Alabama Power, which employed Perkins personal consulting firm as early as 1999. Matrixs influence was felt on matters small and large, from Stoddards city of less than 12,000 to statewide fights over the Florida constitution. In a 2020 email, Burgess wrote a former Matrix employee with an idea they could "cobble together however many millions of dollars it would take to buy ALL the Florida newspapers from Gannett and then we could let most of the clown reporters go, save a fortune, eliminate print, and syndicate content across the entire state.". As such, it would seem the FPL plantsinclusion on the list is unfair. Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images The company conducted an internal investigation and "found no evidence of any issues at all, any illegality or any wrongdoing on the part of FPL or any of its employees. A state board recently rebuffed a request from several Democratic lawmakers for an audit of Florida Power & Light's finances, which the representatives sought following reports linking the. Emails show that Bradleys staff followed up with Florida Power & Light after that discussion. "I want you to make his life a living hell seriously," Silagy wrote in a 2019 email to two of his vice-presidents about one of the Democratic state senators whose 2020 electoral contest was complicated by a spoiler candidate. Hannah Morse covers consumer issues for The Palm Beach Post. With these facilities, FPL replaced inefficient 20th-century coal plants and weaned itself off foreign imported oil. FPL is currently modernizing its plant in Dania Beach, expecting the new gas plant to come online this year, but doesnt anticipate building a new natural gas-powered plant in its 10-year outlook. Such a turn in the political tidecould be particularly dire for a regulated company like FPL, whose literal fortunes rise and fall on the decisions made by the Public Service Commission appointees of the governor who must sign off on any number of high-stakes operational and financial issues for Florida's private utilities, starting with electric rates. Within minutes, one of them forwarded the directive to the CEO of Matrix, LLC, a powerful but little-known political consulting firm that has operated behind the scenes in at least eight states. When the small south Florida citys mayor helped pass an ordinance in 2017 mandating rooftop solar panels on new construction, a network of 10 FPL-aligned operatives mobilized to ensure his ouster. The sex worker later testified the allegations were untrue, and that she had been paid by a Birmingham businessman to make them. They proposed offering a job to Garrett Dennis, a member of the Jacksonville City Council who had been outspoken against selling JEA. If this bill passes as it is, it has the potential to send Florida back to 2013, as if the advances of the last 10 years didnt happen, Vandenbroeck said. Header Image Credit: YouTube, 10 Tampa Bay. 3:12. But Florida Power & Light is arguing rooftop solar could cost Florida utilities about $700 million between 2019 and 2025, according to documents submitted to the Florida Public Service Commission. In all, the centerproduces enough electricity for 750,000 homes and businesses. The Governor appoints members to the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC), the regulatory body responsible for overseeing utilities and determining their profitability, making influence over the Governors office critical to NextEras shareholders. Silagy, who has been with the company for 20 years, has led FPL since 2011, having risen through the ranks by serving as chief development officer and senior vice president of regulatory and state governmental affairs. The last year of Silagy's leadership was marked by high natural gas prices; the global supply chain crisis; two disastrous hurricanes; and a barrage of damning media reports. Following up right after Ketchum's comments, Silagy said that his predecessors had held their roles for about a decade each, and that gearing up for another multi-year rate case with state regulators would mean he would have to stay until 2026. With two months until voters elect the next Florida Governor, NextEra Energy and its subsidiaries, Florida Power & Light and Florida City Gas, have poured nearly $6 million into state level campaign funds and political committees. "We could even do it stealthily so we could inject content into all those publications and nobody has to know who's actually pulling the strings," he wrote. In his Seeking Rents newsletter, publisher Jason Garcia called this decision: one of the most controversial decisions made in recent years by the PSC, a five-member panel comprised of four DeSantis appointees and one remaining holdover from former Gov. In seeking ways to reduce carbon dioxide pollution particularly to address federal emissions goals that aim to stem the effects of climate change its natural to look at the high-emitting plants to find opportunities for efficiencies, said Dalia Patino-Echeverri, an associate professor at Duke Universitys Nicholas School of the Environment, who studies public policy design for energy systems. The largest city served by the supplier is Jacksonville, but the company also provides electricity to 243 cities in Florida. That gave Matrix consultants and FPL executives input on Capitolist stories. If were trying to look all in, theres a whole lot to consider upstream from just the burning of the fuel., FPLs McGrath said the Find Energyreport also doesnt tell the companys whole modernization story.. Florida Power & Light is pushing for it as Floridas biggest utility it has 5.5 million customers, about 65 percent of the state. Promote the @&;$&!!! Namely,how "clean" can, or should, an energy system be to make inroads in tacklingclimate change as the urgency heightens? Run by a former Rick Scott spokesman, Brian Burgess, The Capitolist often focused criticism not on powerful industry players or politicians but on individual journalists at publications like the Miami Herald, Palm Beach Post and Times-Union that had crossed the interests of one of the state's large corporations, like FPL. Bradley, who received Florida Power & Lights draft bill, is a first-term senator who is close to Senate leadership and chairs the Community Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Congressional Reapportionment. Florida Power & Light, whose work with dark-money political committees helped to secure Republican control of the state Senate in the 2020 elections, asked state Sen. Jennifer Bradley to sponsor its top-priority bill: legislation that would hobble rooftop solar by preventing homeowners and businesses from offsetting their costs by selling excess power back to the company, an arrangement known as net metering. They work off intimidating. Alissa Jean Schafer is a research and communications specialist at the Energy and Policy Institute. That month, FPL announced a planned purchase ofGulf Power, expanding its reach for the first time into the Florida Panhandle, and in the process snatching away a lucrative asset from regional rival Southern Company, which had owned Gulf since 1925. There were a lot of challenges that we successfully managed," he said. It backed a failed ballot amendment in 2016 that would have allowed regulators to impose fees and barriers to rooftop solar installation. On the outskirts of Wellington, just before 20-Mile Bend, stands a behemoth of a power plant on a site as big as 166 football fields. And in 2020, Matrix even harnessed the power of the press for itself, when its employees acquired control of The Capitolist, a Tallahassee-based political news site which it used for favorable coverage, leaked records show. Silagy said the email in which he told his team to make Rodrguezs life a living hell was a poor choice of words. 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