Follow the money: your monthly bill, FPL CEO compensation and sleeping guards at Turkey Point

Ever wonder how much of our monthly electricity bills go toward supplying us with ... well, electricity?

The Miami Herald reports today on the annual salary increases of the CEOs of FPL Group and its Florida Power & Light subsidiary, which of course comes right out of all our monthly electricity bills.

According to the Herald:

FPL Group (FPL), the parent of Florida Power & Light, announced that its chief executive, Lewis Hay III, received $11.5 million in total compensation in 2008, a 9.9 percent increase from his compensation package in 2007.

Armando Olivera, president of the FPL utility, received $3.6 million, an increase of 11 percent. Armando Pimentel Jr. received $1.7 million in his first year as chief financial officer.

Nice work, when you can get it! Especially when all the rest of us are threatened with loss of our jobs and our homes ...

Wonder how much of the ever-rising monthly cost of our electricity goes to pay for special entertainment pavilions at Golf tournaments, or slick marketing brochures that tell us that nuclear energy is "clean and safe" or the salaries of hoards of outside consultants and PR spinners and attorneys and lobbyists who we pay to help FPL sell its unchecked expansion to politicians and back to us, the customers.

Oh, and add one more cost that gets passed back to us on our monthly bills because it's tallied as an "operating expense" in FPL's annual budget ...

The Palm Beach Post reports today that in January, FPL paid the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission a $130,000 fine because six security guards at Turkey Point nuclear plant either "slept or served as lookouts for other guards who were sleeping "on multiple occasions" between 2004 and 2006."

Go figure! Wackenhut security guards don't do their job, endangering FPL customers living near the nuclear plant, and those same FPL customers ultimately get stuck with the $130,000 bill!

Sorensen tells FPL: Address Turkey Point concerns

In a letter to the Miami Herald this morning, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Katy Sorensen (District 8) said that FPL officials "prefer not to attend" tonight's scheduled meeting to discuss safety concerns involving the nuclear reactor at the Turkey Point power generating station.

Follows is the text of Commissioner Sorensen's letter, as published in the Herald:

After reading the disturbing story on the front page of The Miami Herald (Papers reveal nuclear discord, March 12) regarding the safety and performance of the Turkey Point nuclear reactor and receiving several calls from residents, I decided to organize a meeting so that elected officials and residents could openly discuss these concerns and FPL officials could address them. While the power company officials are willing to respond through letters to the editor to the concerns raised, they have made it clear to me that they would prefer not to attend the meeting I have scheduled.

As FPL seeks to expand its nuclear facilities and raise customer rates to support this work, I believe it is incumbent on the company, a utility that serves almost all Miami-Dade County residents, to be responsive to questions and concerns.

I hope that FPL officials do the right thing and attend the meeting at the South Dade Government Center tonight, March 26, at 6:30 p.m.

KATY SORENSON, county commissioner, District 8, Miami

We, too, hope FPL will do the right thing and attend this meeting to explain to citizens and residents what it is doing to improve the safety and security at Turkey Point, especially in the face of plans to add two more reactors 6 & 7 at great expense to its customers in the coming years.