Michael Mayo: FPL executive pay jolts the outrage meter

Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo has been doing some further reading into executive pay levels at FPL ... and he's outraged.

In the face of a 30% base-rate hike request, he's outraged at FPL executives' shameless "country club memberships, home security systems, leased vehicles and gasoline, even flights and lodging for an annual physical."

FPL's response? Spokesperson Jackie Anderson resonded to a query from Mayo that given record profits last year the executives' perquisites were "reasonable, appropriate and in line with the needs of the business."

Huh?!?!?!?

Want to read more? Take your blood-pressure medicine first, then sit down at your computer screen to read Michael Mayo's full column online, here.

More Follow the Money: Sun-Sentinel's Michael Mayo on ... flights & lodging for exec physicals?!?

You could wonder all day long what your monthly FPL bill goes to pay for, but ... out-of-state flights and loding so that FPL's top execs can go get a physical checkup?

And, this when they're proposing a $1billion base rate hike for their Florida customers.

'You gotta be kidding!' you say ... Well, Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo isn't.

Read his full column online, here.

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!