South Carolina will put Santee Cooper on the market and let the state-owned utility make the case for keeping itself.
Gov. Henry McMaster signed a joint resolution Wednesday, the day after the General Assembly gave it final approval, according to the Legislature’s records. The final votes were 103 to 3 in the House and 39 to 2 in the Senate.
The measure directs the S.C. Department of Administration to run a competitive bidding process for the sale of some or all of Santee Cooper. The department will also take management proposals that would not involve a sale but are designed to make the Moncks Corner-based utility’s electric operations more efficient and cost-effective.
Santee Cooper must submit its own plan for reform and restructuring at the same deadline as bidders. The plan must address its V.C. Summer debt and project how many jobs it expects to cut within five years.
Bidding is not limited to the companies that answered consultant ICF’s requests for expressions of interest before its Feb. 1 report to the state’s Public Service Authority Evaluation and Recommendation Committee, the resolution says.
The department must weigh each bid’s cash payment to the state, projected rates for 20 years, plans for Santee Cooper’s debt, protections for employees and retirees, expected job cuts and where the buyer would put its headquarters. A bidder’s projected rate base must leave out any V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 debt that the department’s experts and the Office of Regulatory Staff find is not used and useful.
The department’s experts must also broker separate negotiations between each bidder and Central Electric Power Cooperative, Santee Cooper’s largest customer.
Bids will stay confidential until the recommendations go to lawmakers, and only information about the recommendations will be released then. Legislators, the governor and their staffs may not see them before then.
By Jan. 15, 2020, with one 60-day extension allowed, the department must recommend one sale bid and one management proposal, along with an evaluation of Santee Cooper’s plan. The Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees will each have 30 days to make a recommendation. Any sale or management deal would need a joint resolution from the full General Assembly.
Proceeds from a sale would go into a separate account that lawmakers would decide how to spend.
