COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina House Speaker Jay Lucas brought a little bit of gray into the black and white process of deciding whether to sell state-owned utility Santee Cooper and the utility and other lawmakers are all suddenly unsure if that might unravel the whole process.

Lucas suggested the bid by private NextEra Energy of Florida could be renegotiated “to improve the terms" and proposed bringing together a committee with the governor, House and Senate members to do it.

On Tuesday, a special House subcommittee studying the sale agreed, rejecting the NextEra's bid to buy Santee Cooper, Dominion Energy of Virginia's offer to manage the utility and Santee Cooper's own plan to reform itself.

Instead, the commitee agreed to keep negotiating with NextEra and have House Ways and Means Committee staff help them come up with a framework for the discussion before Monday, when the House is taking up the state budget.

But Senate President Harvey Peeler said he isn't sure that's allowed under the law last year that allowed a state agency to collect bids to buy and manage Santee Cooper and send the best ones in both categories to the Legislature along with the public utility's own plan to reform itself.

“I rely on my learned lawyers on the committee, but I don't think there was wiggle room," the Republican from Gaffney said Tuesday hours after Lucas wrote about his plans in an opinion piece in The Post and Courier of Charleston.

Lucas thanks the Department of Administration for spending months going over the bids. but said since the agency wasn't authorized to actually sell Santee Cooper, it couldn't get the best deal.

“The House cannot accept the NextEra bid in its current form. NextEra needs to show that if the General Assembly is willing to risk selling a state asset like Santee Cooper, NextEra is willing to accept the downside of owning it," the Republican from Hartsville wrote.

Later, in an interview with The Associated Press, Lucas said he felt he needed to get the House's position out quickly and forcefully. He said it looked like the process was bogging down and he was perplexed that some senators weren't willing to flex their legislative muscles on this issue.

“This would be the first time in the history of South Carolina that the Senate has admitted that there is a limit on their legislative authority," Lucas said.

NextEra CEO Jim Robo has said in earlier testimony that this bid isn't the utility's final offer and they were willing to talk if someone was willing to negotiate.

“NextEra Energy remains very interested in investing in South Carolina and we look forward to continuing to work with the Legislature to effect a sale offer that will result in the greatest value and certainty for Santee Cooper customers and the state," NextEra spokesman David Reuter said in a statement.

NextEra is offering to buy Santee Cooper and paying off up to $6.9 billion in debt. About $4 billion of that debt came from the utility's minority stake in a pair of nuclear reactors abandoned during construction in 2017. The offer also gives about $940 million in relief to ratepayers, but NextEra's offered electric rates would be about 1% higher over 20 years than Santee Cooper's reform plan.

Santee Cooper has offered its own reform plan that includes settling a lawsuit from ratepayers over the nuclear debacle for $520 million — with $320 million coming from Dominion Energy of Virginia, which bought SCANA Corp., the majority partner in the failed reactors. The plan also includes a four-year rate freeze like NextEra.

The Senate Finance Committee is also holding numerous meetings and faces a mid-March deadline to make a recommendation.

Lucas suggested the Legislature could pass major reforms of Santee Cooper while negotiating the utility's future.

“I’m not sure what there plan is or if they have a plan but it’s pretty obvious now what our plan is," Lucas told the AP.

Senators on the committee wondered Tuesday if Lucas' statement changed everything and required them to start over.

Republican Sen. Tom Davis of Beaufort asked if it is fair that the bidders that were rejected by the state agency and their offers kept secret don't get to also renegotiate, along with NextEra and Dominion, which offered a management plan that wasn't even mentioned in Lucas' op-ed.

“That's fundamentally different from the four corners of the act as I have read it,” the Republican lawyer from Beaufort said.

Peeler asked Santee Cooper CEO Mark Bonsall if he thought reopening the process was fair.

“If I was a bidder looking in from the outside with the state of South Carolina, I wouldn’t participate because you can’t tell when the bid set is done," Bonsall said.

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