Rep. Dwight Dudley, D-St. Petersburg
Date of Birth: May 30, 1954
Birthplace: Boston, Mass.
Residence: St. Petersburg
Education: Florida State University College of Law, Juris Doctor
Occupation: Attorney
Previous Public Office: None
Family: Wife, three children
Did you know?Married to film actressMary Rachel Dudley.
One of Pinellas County's newest House members is shaping up to be one of that chamber's most colorful characters, priding himself on his no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is approach to advocacy for the causes he believes in.
"I am what I am, and that's all that I am," Rep. Dwight Dudley, D-St. Petersburg, tells Sunshine State News. "I'm not going to be partisan, I'm not going to be petty, and I want to advance good policy. That's why we're here."
Dudley is so far the only Democrat interviewed for this series who has bucked the consensus observation that a new bipartisan spirit is characterizing the Florida House of Representatives this year. Though he expresses appreciation for the "respect and courtesy" exhibited by House Speaker Will Weatherford and some of the committee chairmen, he says the prevailing approach to legislative policymaking is still "narrow, partisan, parochial, closed-minded, narrow-minded, [and] neanderthal."
It might be tempting to dismiss his disappointment as little more than the wake-up call of a political newbie to a process he's approached with naive expectations his victory last November represents his first election to public office but Dudley is no stranger to the Florida Legislature.
After a brief stint working in the Florida Senate sergeant's office after graduating college in 1980, he was hired by then-Rep. George Sheldon (who's now acting assistant secretary for the Administration for Children and Families under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), and was soon promoted to legislative analyst when his boss was appointed chairman of the House Governmental Operations Committee. Dudley served in that capacity for four years, before enrolling at Florida State University College of Law, where he was eventually elected president of its student bar association.
While still only a law student, he tried four criminal cases before juries and won each of them. Discovering he had a passion for defending Florida's criminally accused, he spent eight years working at a public defender's office after receiving his law degree, and then opened his own criminal law practice, which he's been working at for almost 20 years.
"I was an advocate for Florida, one individual at a time, and I got good at it," he says. "I've been fighting for individuals my whole career, now I'm fighting for groups: the people of District 68 and of the state of Florida."
His distinguishing priority for the 2013 session is public utilites reform, and his agenda is nothing if not ambitious. He campaigned heavily on an outright repeal of the state's 2006 Nuclear Cost Recovery Act, and is perhaps the House's most vocal co-sponsor of Republican Mike Fasano and fellow-Democrat Michelle Rehwinkel-Vasilinda's HB 4003 ("Nuclear and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle Power Plants"), which would accomplish just that.
Under current Florida law, private government-regulated utility companies, called investor-owned utilities (or IOUs), are allowed to collect "nuclear recovery costs" from their customers, which the company is then supposed to apply toward the building of new nuclear power plants. The system has come under increasing criticism in recent weeks, amid revelations that the more than $1 billion collected has not actually gone into the building of new plants, even though utility companies insist some new ones are forthcoming and some already in existence have received needed upgrades thanks to the new funds.
Dudley says the system amounts to a hidden "utility tax," the cost of which is not normally disclosed to customers. Four Republican senators are introducing a measure which would reimburse utility customers for unspent collected fees and would even repeal the Recovery Act if no IOU begins construction on a new power plant by 2015 or 2016.
Dudley says those proposals don't go far enough, because there are greater principles at stake than the mere efficiency of the current legal arrangement.
"The real issue is: By God, don't take my money! You have no right to take my money, there's no reason for you to take my money; get your own money, go borrow money, go sell stocks, go sell bonds, do trade investments and finance your capital outlay," he explains. "This is an artificial propping up of these companies by violation of the codes of the free enterprise system and the free market, by taxing the people, forcing them to pay for something they didn't ask for."
Dudley says IOUs like Duke/Progress Energy and Florida Power & Light have taken an average of $350 per small household since 2009, with much larger amounts being paid by larger families and especially by small businesses --tough costs to bear in a rough economy.
If HB 4003 fails to make it through the committee process, Dudley says he'll be proposing his own amendment to the Recovery Act, which would "force companies to engage in truthful bIlling, to show how much they are stealing excuse me; I mean, 'taking' from customers."
His HB 447 ("Public Service Commission") goes further still, changing the way members of the state Public Service Commission (PSC) are selected. Currently, each of the five members is appointed by the governor; Dudley's bill divides Florida into five districts, and provides for popular, nonpartisan election of one member from each of those districts.
The PSC which Dudley derisively refers to as "the Investor-Owned Utilities Commission" is in charge of regulating utility companies, including their rates. He alleges that the commission has a history of giving favorable treatment to IOUs, and that his bill is needed to restore a sense of public accountability.
"Ask any Floridian who their Public Service Commission members are; no one knows. They work in anonymity and not for the people, as consumer champions," he says. "The point of my bill is to make that commission accountable to the people, so they know who to talk to when their electric bill goes up."
HB 309 {"Renewable Energy Producers"} is in much the same vein: it would exempt private producers of renewable energy from being characterized as "public utilities," and so excuse them from having to comply with what Dudley says are burdensome regulations imposed by the PSC.
He says his bill would be good both for business and national security, since it would encourage private providers to produce and sell their own accumulated energy, and would move Florida to a "distributive energy" model, rather than one where tens of thousands or millions of people are dependent on a single source.
Dudley tells SSN his status as a freshman member of the minority party means he won't have an easy time getting his ideas accepted by a GOP-dominated Legislature.
"That's the evil and the horror of partisanship and a petty, cynical approach to doing things," he says, explaining his impression that many House Republicans won't support policies originating from a Democrat, "even though [the policies] might mirror or comport with the ideology espoused by those voting against it."
Still, he's hopeful those hurdles can be overcome with hard work and appeal to his colleagues' better angels.
"I choose not to be cynical," he says. "I believe there are people of good will and good nature, and they will be cooperative; they will rise above their petty partisan politics to implement good policy. That's what I'm interested in."
Reach Eric Giunta at egiunta@sunshinestatenews.com or at (954) 235-9116.
