Utility-backed solar group launches campaign for Florida constitutional amendment

With a spot on the ballot secured, the utility-backed group pushing a solar energy constitutional amendment is shifting into gear for November's election.

The group, called Consumers for Smart Solar, unveiled its campaign Tuesday, called "Yes on 1 for the sun." Its constitutional amendment will appear as Amendment 1 on the ballot.

And its backers are billing it as a consumer-friendly expansion of solar power.

"Because of the potential and positive benefits, solar can play a very important role in Florida's energy future, but we have to do it in the right way, a way that protects consumers from scam artists, long-term contract traps and rip-offs," said Jim Kallinger, the campaign co-chair and a former Republican state representative.

For the most part, it maintains the status quo, writing language into the constitution that allows government to regulate solar companies and potentially making it harder for a different kind of solar business model to grow in the future based on leasing solar panels, rather than having to buy them.

The group emerged as a constitutional amendment pushed to open the state up to that other business model. That amendment failed to make the ballot, but Consumers for Smart Solar continues to run against them.

Screven Watson, a board member on the campaign and former executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, attacked those leasing companies as "out-of-state special interests" that engage in sketchy business practices and don't want to pay to maintain the grid.

Much of Consumers for Smart Solar's money comes from the state's utility companies.

In March, they brought in $35,000 -- all from Gulf Power Company. But since they opened their committee in July 2015, $4.5 million of their $7.6 million raised has come from the state's four major power companies: Gulf, Duke Energy, Tampa Electric Company and Florida Power and Light.

Another $3 million came from major business and conservative lobby groups.

This story was originally published April 12, 2016 at 11:23 AM with the headline "Utility-backed solar group launches campaign for Florida constitutional amendment."