SC PSC regulator resigns over pro-natural gas legislation | Editorials

Ratepayers have never had a lot of friends on the S.C. Public Service Commission, whose job should be to protect the public from the monopoly utilities our Legislature forces us to buy our electricity from but which has always done a better job at protecting the utilities’ government-guaranteed profits. Environmentalists have seen even fewer friendly faces.

Tom Ervin was the one clear exception. Mr. Ervin, a former legislator, Circuit Court judge and gubernatorial candidate, was one of the new commissioners the Legislature elected to the rate-setting PSC in the wake of the V.C. Summer debacle, a brief period when legislators seemed more interested in protecting the public than the utilities.

That’s why it was noteworthy when Mr. Ervin sent a 1,557-word letter to Senate President Tom Alexander Wednesday announcing his immediate resignation and urging lawmakers to reject a bill by House Speaker Murrell Smith to roll back consumer protections that were passed after the now-defunct SCANA Corp. and Santee Cooper abandoned the overdue, overbudget nuclear construction project for which ratepayers already had paid billions.

We’re disappointed that Mr. Ervin is no longer a commissioner, but a Legislature that would pass anything near the current version of H.5118 wouldn’t reelect him to another term anyway, especially if it includes the bill’s provision to slash the panel from seven members to three.

You could be forgiven if you mistook Mr. Ervin’s resignation letter for a column from a conservationist or consumer advocate, but that’s sort of the point: Mr. Ervin tells us he resigned because he has grave concerns about the damage H.5118 would do to the PSC and our entire state, and he believed it would run afoul of judicial ethics for him to share them while he remained on the commission.

That raises another concern about the legislation: Parts of it represent such a drastic change to South Carolina’s regulatory process that it arguably silences the people who are best positioned to understand its effects — unless they’re willing to resign their comfortable government positions.

As The Post and Courier’s John McDermott reports, the legislation is being debated as state-owned Santee Cooper and SCANA successor Dominion Energy finalize plans to build a huge natural gas power plant, likely at the site of the shuttered Canadys coal station in Colleton County. That project is the main focus of environmentalists.

But the bill has ramifications far beyond that one project, and Mr. Ervin shares our concerns that the bill would dismantle post-V.C. Summer regulatory protections. His letter to Sen. Alexander, who serves as chairman of the Public Utilities Review Committee that vets PSC candidates, demonstrates why it’s so important to consider the bill’s systemic problems through the eyes of a regulator.

For example, a provision in the bill that allows utility executives to meet privately with regulators, he wrote, is “a dramatic departure” from current law barring ex parte communications: “We need to preserve the PSC’s independence and integrity. As you know, our current law prohibits back room deals and provides a statutory right for all stakeholders to participate in a transparent hearing in public view.” That would disappear under this legislation.

And the…