It didn’t take long to get an irate call from Entergy Mississippi president Haley Fisackerly. The Northside Sun print edition gets delivered on Friday. I got a voicemail by Friday morning. Nice to be noticed.
The voicemail was in response to a column I wrote last week claiming that the Amazon data center in Madison County was going to be really bad news for Entergy residential ratepayers — maybe an extra $1,000 a year or so in the not-too-distant future.
This is going to be especially hard on lower income families. Eighteen percent of Mississippi households are below the national poverty level.
I asked Perplexity AI to compute how much disposable income the average Mississippi household has after paying for essentials like house payment, car notes, insurance, groceries, utilities, etc.
The answer was from $7,526. So a $1,000 increase in our electric bill is going to have a huge impact on the average Mississippi household.
Fisackerly asked if I had even read the bill authorizing the data center and demanded a retraction. I agreed to meet with him at Entergy’s downtown Jackson office and discuss my column.
Being a long time Northsider, I have known Haley Fisackerly socially for many years. We have friends in common. He always seemed like a nice guy. During the Mississippi Power Kemper fiasco, Entergy seemed like a model utility company, keeping rates stable for a decade.
I took the elevator up to the eighth floor or so and was ushered into a big conference room where Fisackerly soon arrived with Jeremy Vanderloo, Entergy vice president of business operations and strategy.
I asked if I could record the meeting, but they asked if we could just talk informally for a while. They then proceeded to berate me.
I sat there and took it for a few minutes and then interrupted. I said something like this: Do you think I just drove in on a turnip truck? There’s no point in my enduring this if we can’t be professional. You have your job to do and I have a different job to do. I respect what you’re doing in your capacity as a utility company executive. I would hope you would respect what I’m doing as a newspaper publisher and columnist.
Your job is to make as much money for Entergy as possible. In fact, as executives, you have a fiduciary duty to maximize the value of Entergy stock for your stock holders. I get that. I don’t hold that against you.
My job is different. I publish content that is of value to readers. I must make that content important enough so they are willing to depart with their hard-earned money to subscribe, which is especially difficult in the Internet age when people expect news to be free. Then I try to sell advertising around these articles. Readers care about their utility bills and expect the newspaper to report the truth about the effect of this data center on their pocketbooks. So you do your job and I’ll do my job and maybe we can have a productive conversation. Now tell me what was inaccurate about my column.
We then talked for an hour or so. I listened patiently to their arguments and explained my point of view. It was a civil discussion.
I told them, as always, I was happy to publish, for free, an opposing column or letter to the editor. And, by the way, I would love for them to buy as many full-page ads as they wanted explaining how the new data center was going to lower customers’ bills and provide whatever other benefits they believed were forthcoming.
When I left the meeting, I could not recall a single alleged inaccuracy about my column that withstood the scrutiny of our meeting.
Nobody knows how much residential rates will go up because nobody knows how much money Amazon is paying for the data center electricity. The bill makes it a “trade secret.” If Amazon doesn’t pay its fair share for the billions to feed the data center, Entergy’s other customers will have to pick up the tab. The math is pretty easy.
Fisackerly told me I was wrong about residential rates. They weren’t going to go up because of the data center (but they were going to go up because of climate change, new grid requirements, etc.). I told him nothing would make me happier than for this to be true and I would wear a bunny suit on the corner of Capitol Street holding a big sign stating, “I was wrong about Entergy’s residential rates.”
At one point, Vanderloo said my article was wrong in saying the Mississippi Public Service Commission had no control over the rates that Entergy charged Amazon.
As it turns out, I had the 316-page bill on my smartphone. I whipped it out and read from page 265 of senate bill 2001: “A public utility may enter into a large customer supply and service agreement with a customer, which may include terms and pricing for electric service without reference to the rates or other conditions that may be established or fixed under Title 77, Chapter 3, Article 1, Mississippi Code of 1972. No approval by the commission of such agreement shall be required. With respect to such an agreement . . . the terms of the agreement, including any pricing or charges for electric service, shall not be subject to alteration or any other modification or cancellation by the commission, for the entire term of the agreement.”
My column was accurate, but a recent Entergy press release was not. The press release states:
"In 2024, the Legislature passed a bill that allowed Mississippi to land the largest economic development investment in state history. Entergy Mississippi was proud to work with the Governor, Mississippi Public Service Commission, Legislature and Madison County in bringing this transformational opportunity to our state. The legislation:
"— Requires that the energy price being charged to AWS must cover the incremental costs to serve the customer, plus additional revenues to benefit all other customers served by Entergy Mississippi, which is the test the MPSC uses when assessing whether to approve a special contract.
"— Creates protections where Entergy Mississippi’s existing customers’ future bills will be lower than they otherwise would have been if AWS had not chosen our service area.
"— Ensures that the MPSC retains oversight of Entergy Mississippi’s project costs and has the authority to exclude from electric rates any costs that are not prudent or necessary."
But there is no such language anywhere in the bill. To prove it, I did a search for the words “incremental costs,” “lower than otherwise” and “MPSC retains oversight.” No results.
They then admitted the language from the press release was not in the bill.
The bill does say “The terms of the agreement shall be designed to provide other customers of the public utility with an economic benefit resulting from the customer's added electrical service needs.”
“Benefit” is a broad and vague word. The Entergy press release, and all its detailed language about what’s in the bill, was all a made up extrapolation from the single word “benefit.”
So I ask, who’s misleading whom?
