The paper headline says “Scott wrong on utility rates”. That was incorrect. It should have said “Scott LIED on utility rates” See if you can follow all the LIES! politifact/florida/statements/2014/oct/21/rick-scott/rick-scott-says-florida-electric-rates-are-lower-c/ Base rate increases occurred under both administrations but are considerably higher under Scott. As you can see, not only is the base rate higher under Scott, but overall rates are also up since January 2011, when Scott took over the governorship from Crist. This despite the fact that fuel reimbursements have fallen considerably since 2011. First, Scott’s numbers are significantly off, based on the studies provided to us by Edison Electric Institute. We quickly found his mistakes. The average residential bill was 9.66 cents per kilowatt hour in 2005, when Jeb Bush was governor. The average monthly rate was 11.61 cents per kilowatt hour in 2006, when Crist was running for governor and 11.43 cents during his first year in office. The average monthly rate also wasn’t 12.41 cents per kilowatt hour in 2010. That was the rate in 2009. As we noted earlier, that was around the time fuel prices spiked. During Crist’s last year in office, the rate was actually 11.18 cents per kilowatt hour, which would mean the average monthly bill actually went down during Crist’s tenure. The study also does not show that rates were higher in Florida than the national average when Crist left office. When Crist came in, Florida’s average monthly bill in 2006 and 2007 was above the rest of the country. But the national average during his final year in office was 12.01 cents per kilowatt hour, higher than Florida’s monthly average of 11.18. What about during Scott’s tenure? The latest figures from June 2014 show Floridians on average pay 11.96 cents per kilowatt hour. That’s up 0.63 cents since Scott took office, or 5.6 percent, a larger jump than during Crist’s term in office. Scott said that while Crist was governor, utility costs went up 30 percent and went from below the national average to above the national average. Since I got elected, utility rates have come down 11 percent and now we are below the average. Scott is off in a lot of ways. Perhaps more egregiously, Scott’s campaign fumbled the data in a report to make it seem like rates were much lower when Crist took office and higher when he left. We found the right numbers, and it paints a completely different picture. There’s so much incorrect in Scott’s statement. We rate it False.
Posted on: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:22:33 +0000
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