By Emily L. Mahoney at Yahoo News

The campaign to drop Duke Energy in St. Petersburg and have a city-run electric utility took a big step Wednesday, as organizers announced a push to pose the question to voters on the 2028 ballot.

“What we’re expecting and fighting for is a Florida that works for us, not investors in North Carolina,” said Cameron Driggers, the founder of the Florida Youth Action Fund. Duke Energy is headquartered in North Carolina.

Driggers’ group joined a new coalition that’s behind the campaign, called Public Power St. Pete, designed to expand the manpower and reach of the grassroots Dump Duke effort. The nonpartisan coalition includes other environmental and affordability-focused organizations: The CLEO Institute, Florida Rising, the Sierra Club and People Power for Florida.

Also the day before the announcement, a consultant sent the Times a report commissioned by Duke Energy about this issue, foreshadowing what is likely to be a fierce battle to come. The report estimates that the cost of St. Petersburg splitting off a city-run utility will be in the billions.

The organizers rallying behind Dump Duke said they’re ready for the fight. They plan to crisscross the city in the coming months, knocking on doors, canvassing busy streets and otherwise spreading the word to gather the roughly 16,200 signatures needed to get a question on the ballot. The campaign is particularly eyeing young voters, including on the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus. The core of their message is that a city utility would not collect profit for shareholders like Duke does, allowing residents to pay lower power bills.

In general, publicly owned electric utilities in Florida offer lower average bills than corporate utilities, according to a bill comparison analysis by the Florida Municipal Electric Association, which represents the state’s public electric utilities. A study commissioned by Clearwater, which was also considering dropping Duke Energy until recently, also found that residents could save millions on their bills if the city ran services instead.

Separately from this petition effort, the St. Petersburg City Council voted in June to commission a study from experts about the feasibility of leaving Duke Energy. That study is expected to be completed next year, and could contain valuable statistics about how much residents would save on their bills under a city-owned option.

If Public Power St. Pete gathers enough signatures, though, voters could have a say on this issue regardless of how the City Council moves forward. The ballot language would propose changing the city charter, which is like a constitution for a municipality.

If voters approved the question in 2028, the city would be required to create an electric utility. It would get one year to negotiate a deal with Duke Energy to purchase its equipment, and if no deal could be reached in that time, St. Petersburg must move to use eminent domain. The ballot specifies that the utility would answer to a five-member governing board, three of whose members would be elected. The other two would be appointed by the City Council.

Never before has a Florida public utility ballot question included this level of detail about its governing structure, the organizers said. Having a majority of board members be elected is also unusual, as is for the mayor not to serve or appoint anyone on the board.

“It was really important to us for this to not feel like it could be an entity influenced by outside forces and it would really be a voter-led utility,” said Raymer Maguire, who works on campaigns at The CLEO Institute, a Florida climate change advocacy group.

The coalition has conducted polling about its message and believes it has broad support among both Democrats and Republicans, they said. The growing public backlash to large-scale data centers, which could soon be added to Duke Energy’s Florida grid, could also add momentum.

Additionally, they expect Duke Energy will fight back with “an aggressive opposition campaign.”

“Do we expect to be outspent? Absolutely. Do we expect there to be confusion or misinformation? Likely,” Maguire said. “But we have the voter support on our side, and the momentum and the facts.”

Duke Energy has repeatedly expressed opposition to St. Petersburg dropping its services. Tuesday evening, hours before the scheduled news conference by environmental groups, Duke Energy publicized an analysis it had commissioned.

“This study makes clear a government takeover of St. Petersburg’s electric service is unaffordable and irresponsible,” Duke spokesperson Ana Gibbs said in a statement.

Duke hired Concentric to conduct a similar analysis in Clearwater, and the firm has produced reports for utility companies fighting public utility campaigns around the country. In Clearwater, Concentric’s estimate for the value of Duke assets within city limits was roughly double what city-hired consultants determined in a later appraisal.

The St. Petersburg petition language for the ballot measure is as follows. The “full text” of the proposed charter amendment, which gets into further detail, is also embedded below:

Ballot Summary: Requires City to create an electric utility and acquire needed assets of existing utility, by negotiation or eminent domain if no agreement within one year; creates board governing rates and service with three resident-elected members and two Council-appointed members serving staggered four-year terms; provides for appointment of a utility director; allows residents to seek judicial enforcement; states intention that City have more control over affordability, sustainability, resilience, environmental impacts, planning, and accountability.

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