If there is anything to be learned from the long-awaited $150,000 financial study of Santee Cooper, it's that the politicians should change next to nothing about our publicly owned utility. The Credit Suisse First Boston study, released Thursday, says Santee Cooper is worth $5 billion, the most valuable entity in South Carolina. Its credit rating is excellent.

If the utility's purpose is to operate for the economic benefit of the people, milking it for more money or selling it would be madness. And further political wrangling over how the state should oversee Santee Cooper could undermine its creditworthiness.

A private utility of equal value would return about $20 million per year in dividends to stockholders, according to Credit Suisse. Because that's double the $10 million (1 percent of gross revenue) Santee Cooper pays the state each year, it could be argued that the utility pays the state too little.

But any extra money sent to the state could only come from higher rates for retail and wholesale ratepayers. South Carolinians in all 46 counties buy Santee Cooper power, either from the utility itself at retail or at wholesale via the S.C. electric cooperatives.

Rates would escalate even more if the state sold Santee Cooper to a private company. On top of the added money a buyer company would pay in stockholder dividends, it also would have to pay state and local taxes. The added money to pay those added costs could only come from electricity customers, many of whom have low incomes.

Higher rates also would curtail Santee Cooper's usefulness in abetting S.C. economic development. And here at home, higher rates would translate inevitably into higher-cost Grand Strand vacations.

The Credit Suisse study, paid for by the Santee Cooper board at the behest of the governor's office, probably will intensify the free-floating anxiety that South Carolinians are feeling about Santee Cooper. Many wonder what Sanford's real motive was in seeking the study. To what use will this information be put?

This anxiety came into being because of Sanford's overeager desire to turn the utility to greater financial benefit for the state and because of legislators' overreaction to his meddling. It's time for this melodrama to end.

Santee Cooper Chairman Guerry Green has the right take on how to do that. Rather than pass the "reform" bill to give the governor only a figurehead role in Santee Cooper, legislators should leave his appointment power intact. And rather than insist that he must retain the power to remove board members at will, Sanford should accede to legislators' desire that board members be removable only for acting against the utility's best interests. Let board members serve out their seven-year terms.

Everything else about Santee Cooper - everything - should remain as it is. Credit Suisse has established that our state-owned utility is in good financial balance. Why would we want to upset it?