The Statehouse Report

A controversial bill that promises to meet South Carolina’s growing energy needs by ramping up in-state power production is headed to the S.C. House floor next week with bipartisan support, despite fierce opposition from many of the state’s leading consumer and environmental groups. “We absolutely understand there’s a need for more energy generation,” S.C. League of Women Voters President Lynn Teague told Statehouse Report. “But the General Assembly should not be intruding on the decisions that are supposed to be made by state regulatory agencies.” Of particular concern, she said, were a provision allowing utilities to meet with regulators behind closed doors, and the decision to put economic interests, rather than the concerns of ratepayers, at the heart of the regulatory process. “When government grants a monopoly to utilities, it’s giving them a very big asset,” Teague said. “And it’s the state’s absolute responsibility to protect the public from abuse of that asset.”