We've been here before. And before that. Until the very mention of the Public Service Commission ignites a miserable sense of déja vu.

It felt so eerily familiar, these past few weeks, hearing Public Service Commissioner Katrina McMurrian argue that there was nothing untoward about dining with an FPL power broker even when the PSC is weighing a 30 percent rate increase.

``It was just chitchat,'' McMurrian insisted.

McMurrian's innocent night of chitchat stirred discomfiting memories of that famous evening in 2002 at the Delano Hotel's fabulously expensive Blue Door restaurant, when two other public service commissioners (turning their titles into misnomers) were wined and dined by a utility lobbyist.

Later, they professed shock that meals at Miami Beach's swankiest restaurant might have exceeded the $30 they each contributed toward the bill.

Such expensive chitchat.

RECENT REVELATIONS

Lately, we've learned that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the unseemly relationship between the PSC and the very utilities the commission is supposed to police. And that the PSC's own lobbyist had attended a Kentucky Derby party at the home of an FPL lobbyist. And that PSC staffers have been providing FPL their private BlackBerry PIN codes, allowing the utility lawyers and lobbyists to exchange secret messages and circumvent public records laws.

This might to be the stuff of outrage except that the PSC has been flouting the public interest so long that their transgressions seem about as shocking as the family dog chewing up another pair of shoes.

Instead, it's like a trip down memory lane.

It's 1992 again, and the statewide prosecutor is investigating, yes, the unseemly relationship between the PSC and the very utilities the commission is supposed to police.

That was the year a statewide grand jury offered up eight recommendations designed to elevate the PSC into something more than an adoring collection of utility sycophants -- including a requirement that all communications between the regulators and the monopolies be made public.

Which might have precluded the PSC's future Blackberry junkies from texting secret love messages to utility lobbyists.

But only one of the eight recommendations were adopted -- commissioners were required to wait two years before going to work for a utility and cashing in on permissive oversight.

$5,000 FINE

Two years ago, Commissioner Rudy Bradley (one of the very commissioners who dined so unwittingly well at the Blue Door) was fined $5,000 for reading from a Verizon memorandum at a rate hearing without mentioning that he was parroting the company's argument.

Through the years, it has become apparent -- again and again -- that the Public Service Commission is virtually immune to public outrage.

These unelected utility toadies are nominated by appointees of the Legislature and selected by the governor -- a structure that keeps commissioners forever insulated from the concerns of the voting public (though in the pending FPL rate case, Joe Public stands to suffer a $1.3 billion jolt) and forever vulnerable to influence of the utilities.

At the very least, the beleaguered public deserves the right to vote whether sitting commissioners should be retained for another term. Give us something, anything to stop this déja vu.

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