The Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) Authority voted Thursday to appeal the Eighth Judicial Circuit’s ruling from Wednesday, hoping to make its legal existence ironclad.
The decision came during the authority’s regular meeting and passed unanimously. Earlier on Thursday, the Gainesville City Commission also discussed its options but decided not to take a vote yet—with more than 30 days still available to appeal.
Judge George Wright’s ruling leaves both boards without a full victory. The ruling means the city can amend its charter and potentially return to operational control of the utility (a threat to the GRU Authority’s legal existence) but prevents the November 2024 ballot from making that change because of wording that Wright declared misleading.
Mayor Harvey Ward and GRU CEO Ed Bielarski both said that a lasting resolution won’t be quick in coming.
“We are not going to end this quickly,” Ward said to the commission. “There is nothing we could do, I don’t think, that could end all of this by the end of the week.”
Ward said that the portion of the ruling that went for the city, the ability to amend its charter, was the largest issue in question. He called winning that portion a victory for home rule in Florida.
City Attorney Dan Nee agreed.
“That is a significant home rule issue, and he ruled in favor of the city in that regard,” Nee said.
Nee said he believes the city to be in a better position going into any appeals with Wright’s previous ruling in their favor on that point. He said the appeals process could take a year before getting a result and said the timeline could get delayed further.
Ward and commissioners said it’s their responsibility to back the vote that citizens made in November, whether through appeals or another referendum with new wording. Commissioners discussed the possibility of issuing a special election to place a new referendum before voters even while the appeal process takes place.
Commissioner Bryan Eastman also advocated for meeting with the GRU Authority to see if a negotiation could be reached outside the courts—a negotiation to bring GRU back under the City Commission based on the judge’s ruling.
He said slowly moving through the courts for another year would be painful for staff at GRU and within general government.
GRU Authority Chair Eric Lawson said the utility directors have the responsibility to advocate for the authority and House Bill 1645 that created it. He pointed to accomplishments from the past year to show the progress being made, including reducing base electric rates for over 60% of customers and accelerating debt reduction.
“In just a short time, admin with the support of the board, have really done some tremendous things to support our utility,” Lawson said. “And I hope, no matter what happens, that these decisions will stand.”
Director Robert Skinner supported the idea of sitting down with the City Commission to discuss a path forward. He said the appeal option remains if nothing fruitful comes in the next month or so.
Director Craig Carter said he’s not sure what good would come of a meeting with the commission and made the motion directing staff to pursue an appeal.
Bielarski said it’s no time for anyone to run victory laps. GRU Attorney Kiersten Ballou said both sides will need a “dig in” mentality for the coming appeal process.
The electric utility that the City of Gainesville developed and paid for should never have been removed from city control.
If the mafia had done that, it would have been called theft. If the Soviet Union had done it, it would have been called Communism.
But in this case, it was the Florida legislature that did it (under a bill introduced by a legislator who supposedly represented the area’s best interests) so I guess it should be called a taking, or maybe state abrogation of local control.
Since so many people who live outside the city limits complained about the price they paid for electric service, maybe the state should re-think this whole regulated electricity electricity market thing under which we live. Maybe we should have community choice aggregation and let Clay Electric, Duke Energy, FP&L and whoever else wants to make the capital investment to also serve the outlying areas.
GRU’s was extremely profitable for 20 years until the City of Gainesvile took it over and used it as a slush fund for their special projects to-keep the property tax mileage rate low only in the City of Gainesvile. Meanwhile jacking up the utility rates in Alachua County. It’s so funny how the City of Gainesville annex property and builds nice commercial buildings and residence, but will not annex, lower income neighborhoods this is fact, not opinion based information.
GRU was ALWAYS a City thing. They never ‘took it over’. You should understand that there are a number of City utilities in Florida that do exactly what GRU did. Sending certain profits to the City to mitigate the property taxes charged.
maybe, but for a long time they allowed the people who actually had utility experience actually run it, then they started to try to micromanage it and go in for this like the biomass fiasco.
I don’t think there is very much of anything that this current GRU board would do that would be markedly different from what a board reporting to the City instead of beholden to the Governor could do. The difference, of course, is that THIS current GRU is subject to the Governor, instead of the citizens of the City.
And lest those outside of the City want to complain about ‘not having a voice’ they need to consider the alternatives they might have. Duke? FPL? What makes them think they have a voice, now?
Well stated!
so change it so that Alachua county voters get to vote on Authority members, simple fix. 😉
it’s not that simple. you can’t just change utility providers in Florida, unless you are someone like UF. the lines that connect to your house lock you with that provider unless you do Solar and try going off-grid, since the Solar Feed-in doesn’t really work for people without connections. with that mindset, GRU should be prohibited from providing service out of the City Limits, but that isn’t the case so.