Tallahassee, FL — Yesterday evening, the Florida Senate Ethics Committee approved Ana Ortega and Bobby Payne to serve on the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC), following approval from the Senate Regulated Industries Committee in a vote earlier this month. Ortega and Payne’s nominations must now be approved through a full-senate vote.

The hearing comes one week after advocacy groups and the Office of Public Counsel (OPC), which represents consumers in utility issues, filed an appeal of the PSC’s final approval of Florida Power & Light’s (FPL) near-$7 billion base rate hike to the state Supreme Court.  Advocacy groups and the OPC were excluded from FPL’s corporate and large energy user group settlement reached last August. 

In response to the vote, Food & Water Watch Southern Regional Director Jorge Aguilar issued the following statement:

“Unfortunately, Ortega and Payne continue to dance around questions of how they will ensure affordability and accountability for Florida residents at a time electricity bills are at record levels. One can only glean that DeSantis’s two new commissioners will continue the PSC’s pattern of doing the corporate utilities bidding over the real needs of working Florida families, particularly as new data center companies are built out in the state.

“During the hearing, Senator Gaetz rightfully pointed out that the return on equity that utilities are making is substantially higher in Florida than in other states.  But both nominees answered questions with vagueness and platitudes. We should all be disappointed that these commissioners failed once again to strongly commit to not favoring these billion-dollar companies over the ability of people to afford the cost of electricity. The only way we’ll see the changes Floridians need is to reform the utility regulators by passing the Affordable Energy Reform Act.” 

Senator Carlos Guillermo-Smith introduced the Affordable Energy Reform Act in January to reform PSC regulation to rein in utility profiteering and lower energy bills. According to Food & Water Watch research, between December 2020 and January 2026, the PSC approved increasing Florida utility bills by:

• 86% for Tampa Electric customers
• 49% for Duke Energy customers
• 45% for Florida Power & Light customers