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LCEC issues on Cape’s legislative wish list

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City Council finalized its package of initiatives for consideration by the 2017 State Legislative session at Monday’s meeting at City Hall to once again include several issues regarding the city’s electric utility provider.

The electric utility initiative was removed from the legislative plan when the city suspended its complaint filed with the Florida Public Service Commission when negotiations resumed with LCEC. Now that negotiations have broken off, the initiative has been reinstated.

“There is no language in state law that allows members of a coop to file for a referendum,” said City Manager John Szerlag. “I will be in touch with (LCEC CEO) Dennie Hamilton to see if they want to continue negotiations and if they do I will make Mr. Diamond available for that. I’m always open to negotiations.”

A referendum is an action taken by a small percentage of a coop’s members to overturn a decision by the board of directors, for example, selling off assets of the coop.

“The city is entitled to do whatever they think is best for them,” said LCEC spokesperson Karen Ryan on Tuesday. “It’s not a surprise to us, given their actions recently. We will just wait and see how it plays out in the legislature.”

Stuart Diamond represents the city at the negotiating table with LCEC.

“The city decided five months was enough time to negotiate since there wasn’t any movement in the talks on three specific areas – streetlights, electric rates, and equity issues,” Diamond said last week when negotiations broke off. “The city wants a modest concession from LCEC on the equity, especially giving the equity to the heirs of someone who has died and not make them wait seven years. The city wants that to be 60 days or so, which is increasingly the practice all over the nation.”

LCEC is holding more than $8 million of equity belonging to the city, which is LCEC’s largest customer, city officials said. LCEC returned about 1 percent of that equity, or about $90,000, last year.

“That’s taxpayer dollars,” said Assistant City Manager Mike Ilczyszyn. “The city as an entity is not going away. We will never get all that back, ever. We want to see the state set a reasonable amount of how much equity LCEC can hold, like one or two million. Factor in all the government agencies using LCEC and it’s a lot of money.”

The city will make the legislative platform document available to its lobbyists in Tallahassee and push its elements in face-to-face meetings with state officials in the coming months.