New reason to question FPL storm work charge

Only Florida Power & Light's most astute customers can keep track of the company's requests for rate increases. Have state regulators lost track, too?

In November, FPL asked the Public Service Commission for a one-year surcharge to compensate the utility for higher fuel costs. The PSC said yes. In January, FPL asked to begin collecting $2.09 more each month to pay the cost of repairing damage from three of last year's hurricanes. The request came three months before the commission was scheduled to hold hearings on how much hurricane compensation FPL really deserved. Still, the PSC said yes in advance to higher bills and bought the company's pitch that it could refund money if regulators decided against the storm surcharge. Late this year, FPL will ask regulators for permission to raise basic power rates -- more money just for doing business as usual. The PSC says it will listen.

Next week, FPL appears before the commission to justify the surcharge already in place for hurricane damage. Today, the PSC will hold a hearing from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Palm Beach County Governmental Center in West Palm Beach to hear from consumers. The company wants to collect $536 million from its 4.2 million customers over the next three years to replenish emergency reserves. FPL claims to have spent $890 million on repairs after Charley, Frances and Jeanne. But the accounting behind that number is somewhere between fuzzy and creative. The public deserves to know how FPL arrived at that figure and how much spending after the hurricanes was related to hurricane damage. If the utility deserves help absorbing the storm expenses, customers shouldn't cover the bill on faith or pay for overdue maintenance.

The accounting picture grew more distorted this month when the Office of Public Counsel, the state's consumer attorney, reported that FPL has $1.24 billion sitting in a depreciation reserve. The money comes from a charge assessed customers for wear and tear on poles, wires, transformers and other equipment. The public counsel believes that some of the depreciation reserve can be used to offset hurricane damage; FPL says the reserve must remain a separate fund because of state and federal rules.

Regulators can't make sense of the utility's rate requests until they conduct forensic audits of the depreciation reserve and the spending on hurricane damage. Today, that's one message consumers in this area can start delivering.