Senate OKs bill to limit utility's help

COLUMBIA - A bill forbidding Santee Cooper from transferring proceeds from the sale of surplus property to the state treasury easily passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

The committee also grilled a nominee for Santee Cooper's board on whether he approved of such transfers of money and would promise to study the utility and its purpose.

The bill is sponsored by Sen. Luke Rankin, D-Myrtle Beach, who was perturbed when Santee Cooper's board agreed to sell $13 million worth of excess property and give the state the money.

Santee Cooper serves most of Horry, Georgetown and Berkeley counties with electricity.

Though a creature of the state, Santee Cooper does not receive tax money but does send 1 percent of its gross each year to the state treasury.

Rankin's bill would not change that allocation.

"What we want to get across is Santee Cooper is not to be used as a revenue arm of this state," said Sen. Bill Mescher, R-Pinopolis. He is a co-sponsor of the bill and a former president of Santee Cooper.

"This is not a fund of money available to bail out the state," Rankin said. "There's no authority for what they've done here."

He said it's "a backdoor tax increase" for Santee Cooper customers, who would be subsidizing taxpayers statewide when the money could be used to buy down the utility's bonds or prevent rate increases.

Sen. Scott Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, said he at first questioned the bill but now thinks it is needed.

What Santee Cooper's board did "could set a terrible precedent," he said.

The state could decide to take State Ports Authority property, for example, and sell it to offset low revenues even though the authority is holding land for future expansion.

Sen. John Kuhn, R-Charleston, said the board might not have acted as it did if it had experienced members. Gov. Mark Sanford has replaced nine of the 11 members since he took office.

Sen. Dick Elliott, D-North Myrtle Beach, introduced a bill taking away the governor's power to replace board members unless their terms are expired.

James Sanders of Gaffney is one of Sanford's new appointees to the Santee Cooper board. He has been serving since July but must be confirmed by the Senate to continue.

Sanders said the board thought it was OK to help out the state, and he approved the action because it is a one-time payment from the sale of unneeded property.

"But those properties were bought by the ratepayers, not by the state," Rankin told him. Sanders agreed but said he still did not see anything wrong with the payment.

Sen. Jake Knotts, R-West Columbia, said the board acted in an uninformed way to do something "that's never been done before in the history of Santee Cooper."

Despite several senators' concerns, Sanders was recommended for approval by the committee. The full Senate must grant confirmation.