Editorial board

FLORIDA TODAY

Vote no on Amendment 1, misleadingly titled “Rights of Electricity Consumers Regarding Solar Energy Choice.”

It’s bad policy for Florida. And it was written to trick voters into making that bad policy permanent by adding it to Florida’s Constitution.

If passed, the utility-sponsored Amendment would extend no new rights to consumers regarding the installation or use of solar energy equipment, as the ballot language implies. Home- and business owners already have the right to install solar equipment under Florida law.

Amendment 1 would, however, mandate new competition-stifling barriers to solar-equipment companies that want to expand and help more residents reduce their electric bills and reliance on power utilities through creative business terms. One common arrangement is for the solar companies to affordably install equipment on homes or businesses and then sell that power directly back to the consumers at a discount versus their current electricity rates, bypassing the major utilities. Under the amendment, this business arrangement would be blocked. Opponents say Amendment 1 also could call into question “net-metering:” the practice of requiring electric companies to purchase excess electricity from solar homes -- a practice utilities deride as "subsidies."

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Both dampen the profits of utilities such as FPL or Duke Energy, which is why they cooked up Amendment 1 and have bankrolled the campaign. Ads by "Consumers for Smart Solar" make Amendment 1 sound like the dawn of a solar-power revolution – when it is the opposite.

As a campaign insider revealed, in an audio recording published by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times, Amendment 1 is “a little bit of political jiu-jitsu,” designed to trick Floridians who like the idea of solar power into restricting its expansion and sparing monopolistic utilities from competition.

Sal Nuzzo, vice president of policy for the Amendment 1-backing James Madison Institute, said it “would completely negate anything they (the solar power companies and would-be consumers) would try to do either legislatively or constitutionally down the road.”

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If you understand that, and it’s what you want, then by all means vote for Amendment 1.

But we think it’s bad for consumers, bad for entrepreneurship, bad for clean-energy development and ultimately a detriment to the environment.

As Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Pariente warned when her peers approved Amendment 1 to appear on the ballot: "Masquerading as a pro-solar energy initiative, this proposed constitutional amendment, supported by some of Florida's major investor-owned electric utility companies, actually seeks to constitutionalize the status quo.”

Vote no on Amendment 1.

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