![]() When he announced his campaign for the governorship in January 2018, DeSantis pledged to “drain the swamp in Tallahassee, which needs to be drained, just like Washington.” But shortly after he was elected, DeSantis aggressively began raising money from businesses with interests before his office. According to the data, only Florida and Wisconsin allowed utilities to reduce the amount of data they provided in 2021. ![]() Data provided to The Lever by the Energy and Policy Institute, which co-authored the report with Bailout Watch and tracks utility influence, shows that 32 states report utility disconnection data. There is no systematic disclosure of utility shutoffs across the country. Nationwide, utilities shut off power 5.7 million times since 2020. But we do not know the total, because the DeSantis-appointed Florida PUC allowed them to hide the data.įollow us on Apple News and Google News to make sure you see our stories first, and to help make sure others see our breaking news as well.īesides NextEra, another utility company operating in Florida, the Southern regional monopoly powerhouse Duke Energy, cut off power to over 600,000 customers since 2020. If that disconnection rate continued, noted the report, NextEra would have shut off 1.2 million customers in 2022. NextEra - the parent company of Florida’s largest utility, Florida Power & Light - disconnected 738,000 Floridians in 2021 and 1.1 million Americans nationwide since 2020, according to a report from Bailout Watch last month. Now it’s impossible to know how many customers have been disconnected from their electric utilities for being unable to pay their increasing power bills. The move came less than a month after commission members approved the largest electric rate hike in Florida’s history, resulting in a 20 percent increase in costs to residential ratepayers. The memorandum, which reversed the commission’s September 2020 decision to collect the data to track the pandemic’s effects on utility customers, came after DeSantis stacked the board with his appointees. In November 2021, Florida’s Public Service Commission (PUC) issued a memorandum allowing electric utilities to stop disclosing their shutoff data. Ron DeSantis’ campaign and the state Republican party he controls, his appointees to a little-known body allowed utility companies to stop disclosing information about how they are shutting off the power for thousands of struggling Florida residents. ![]() As more than $9 million in utility and utility-connected cash flooded the coffers of Florida Gov.
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