Florida utility regulators attended West Palm Beach retreat where industry-linked group paid their way

Two of Florida's five utility regulators attended a multi-day private retreat at a luxury West Palm Beach hotel in July where an industry-connected nonprofit covered their travel and lodging, the Tampa Bay Times reported this week, drawing criticism from a senior Republican state senator who says the trip appears to violate Florida's ethics code for Public Service Commission members.

Commissioners Mike La Rosa and Bobby Payne each blocked out three weekdays on their calendars for the retreat at The Ben hotel, hosted by a group called the Regulators Roundtable Institute, according to public records cited by the Times. The commission says the two spoke at the event and that the trip complied with state law.

The Public Service Commission sets electric rates for millions of Florida households and businesses, including customers of Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy Florida and Tampa Electric, and it oversees the rates charged to power-hungry data centers.

The retreat

The Ben sits on the West Palm Beach waterfront, and summer room rates there start at more than $500 a night, the Times reported. La Rosa and Payne did not pay those costs because the event's hosts covered their travel expenses.

Devyn Irvin, a spokesperson for the commission, told the Times that the hosts covered "event-related" expenses for featured speakers, and that both commissioners were therefore allowed to accept them under state ethics law. La Rosa spoke on the first full day of the conference and Payne on the second, she said, and the topic of their remarks was "generally discussing Florida's energy landscape."

"Commissioners regularly attend educational conferences to stay informed on regulatory policies and developments in the rapidly evolving utility industry," Irvin said in a statement to the paper.

Payne and La Rosa did not respond to voicemails from the Times seeking further comment. Both are former Republican state lawmakers appointed to the commission by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Before joining the commission, Payne sponsored the 2024 bill that struck most mentions of climate change from Florida law.

Who is behind the Regulators Roundtable

The Regulators Roundtable is a Virginia nonprofit with strong Florida ties. Its president, Elizabeth Gianini, is a longtime Florida communications strategist who previously worked for the state Republican Party and lives in Orlando, the Times reported. The group says it convenes conservative public service commissioners to promote reliability, affordability, innovation and state-driven regulatory authority.

The Washington Post, which first reported on the Florida retreat, reported that the group counts utility industry interests and tech companies building data centers, including Google, among its members, and that it is associated with GOPAC, a national Republican political organization. Gianini confirmed to the Times that the GOPAC Education Fund provides administrative, human resources and strategic support to the Roundtable.

Federal filings show GOPAC has received more than $100,000 each this year from Florida Power & Light and the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, and that Duke Energy gave $365,000 last year, according to the Times. FPL did not respond to the paper's questions about whether its contributions reflected support for the Roundtable, and Anthropic did not comment. A Duke Energy spokesperson, Ana Gibbs, said the company's political contributions follow the law and "come from shareholders, not customers."

The commission says the Roundtable does not take money from the utilities it regulates and that none of them sponsored the July retreat. Irvin said staff confirmed that with the group. But neither the commission nor Gianini would provide a list of the group's donors or of the retreat's sponsors. The nonprofit, created last year, has not yet filed the federal paperwork that would disclose its donors. It also has a related 501(c)(4) arm that is not required to reveal its donors, and it is unclear whether that arm played a role in the retreat.

"Regulators Roundtable Institute is not a governmental body and thus no official actions by public service and utility commissioners can nor do occur during programming," Gianini said in an email to the Times. "Commissioners remain responsible for complying with their state's ethics laws."

What Florida's ethics law says

Florida holds its utility commissioners to stricter gift rules than most public officials. Section 350.041 of the Florida Statutes says a commissioner may not accept anything from any utility the commission regulates, or from any company that owns, controls or is an affiliate or subsidiary of one. Where those rules conflict with the general state ethics code, the more restrictive provision applies.

The law carves out room for conferences. Commissioners may attend conference meals and events open to all participants, and may attend commissioner-only or speaker-only events at a conference as long as no representative of a regulated utility sponsors them in whole or in part. Commissioners can also accept travel expenses to conferences at which they give a speech, according to the Times, and that is the exception the commission is relying on.

Critics push back

State Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Crestview, who chairs the Senate ethics committee and once served on the Florida Commission on Ethics, was blunt. "If public service commissioners take free food, lodging and other amenities from companies they are or will be regulating, that seems to me to be a violation of the Florida code of ethics," he told the Times. "I think it's very bad judgment at the very least and an ethical violation, in my view."

Gaetz said he was not persuaded by the argument that no Florida-regulated utility sponsored the event, saying the commission cannot guarantee that issues or people at the retreat will not later come before the regulators. Gaetz has filed bills in each of the past two legislative sessions aimed at limiting electric bill increases by targeting utility profits. Both died amid industry lobbying, the Times reported.

Nancy Argenziano, a former Republican lawmaker who chaired the commission during her 2007 to 2010 tenure and has since left the party, said that if the trip was legal, the law is the problem. "There's no way in hell I would've done that," she said. She compared the arrangement to a judge in a divorce case buying gifts for one of the spouses.

Caroline Klancke, a former general counsel for the Florida Commission on Ethics who founded the nonpartisan Florida Ethics Institute, said it appears La Rosa and Payne followed the law. "But Floridians are right to be wary of commissioner attendance at multi-day events, occurring outside of public scrutiny, where commissioners can be placed in close proximity to, and in conversation with, utility industry lobbyists paid to persuade them in their public capacity," she wrote.

Shelby Green, a researcher at the utility watchdog Energy and Policy Institute, called the group an exclusive club. "Participating in the Roundtable and other similar groups creates, at a minimum, an appearance of impropriety and raises a fair question: whose interests are the Commissioners serving?" she said.

Florida regulators also commonly attend the annual conference of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Unlike the Roundtable, that association posts its conference agenda, speakers and sponsors online, the Times noted.

Why it matters for Florida ratepayers

The commission's decisions land directly on monthly power bills. Last November, it approved a four-year rate settlement for FPL, the state's largest utility, that allowed base rate increases of $945 million in 2026 and $705 million in 2027, over the objection of the Office of Public Counsel, which represents FPL's customers. That settlement also created large-load tariffs meant to keep data centers and other heavy users on long-term contracts with penalties for leaving early.

How data center costs are handled is now one of the biggest issues before regulators nationally, and companies building those facilities are among the interests represented in groups like the Roundtable, according to the Post's reporting. Florida's commission will continue to decide rate and infrastructure questions for FPL, Duke Energy Florida and Tampa Electric in the years ahead.

What's next

No ethics complaint over the trip had been reported as of this week. The Florida Commission on Ethics investigates alleged violations of the commissioners' standards of conduct, and the statute bars anyone found to have given a commissioner a prohibited gift from appearing before the Public Service Commission for two years.