Maine Attorney General Janet Mills says the investigation by her office was prompted by a published report that called into question a potential conflict of interest by Kurt Adams, and by a request from the Citizens Task Force on Wind Power and from Adams himself.
"We simply wanted to document the timeline: What decisions were made when, and did he disqualify himself appropriately on certain issues? And we found that he did," Mills says. "What's also interesting for the public to know, I think, is that the PUC really has no jurisdiction over windpower."
The attorney general's office reviewed emails, corporate documents, employent contracts, PUC and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission pleadings and the record relating to a company associated with First Wind. Staff, commissioners and Adams were also interviewed.
Ironically, Mills says the story begins when Central Maine Power met with the PUC in 2007 to discuss a proposal to expand transmission lines in Maine. When Adams looked at alternative routes for the lines, he discovered that one of them would lead directly behind his residence. So he hired an attorney to advise him whether he might have a conflict of interest presiding over the proceedings.
Adams' attorney found there was "no basis" to disqualify himself from the case, but "his own attorney advised him that he should at least ask the attorney general for a follow up and whether or not he should disclose the potential conflict to the public at large and to the parties to the case, and he was advised that he ought to disclose that interest," Mills says.
Mills says Adams did pursue that advice. But while he waited for an answer, he decided to seek employment with an energy developer not regulated by the PUC. He initially reached out to First Wind. He interviewed with the company in December, 2007 and was offered a job sometime around February of 2008. But Adams turned it down in an email, in which he wrote: "I look forward to watching your company thrive in Maine and elsewhere."
A month later Chief Deputy Attorney General Linda Pistner issued an opinion about Adams and the CMP case. She also concluded that he did not have an actual conflict, but advised Adams to disclose his interest at the outset of the case proceedings. Instead, Adams called First Wind back and said he would take the job.
"We're really pleased that Attorney General Mills and her staff conducted a very thorough review that concluded that both First Wind and Kurt Adams acted appropriately," says John LaMontagne, a spokesman for First Wind. Adams could not be reached for comment.
"Kurt operates under the highest ethical standards and I know that he would do anything possible to try to be as open and transparent as possible," LaMontagne says. "So I'm sure he's very pleased that this is behind us."
One major question in the investigation centered on benefits offered by First Wind. When Adams signed a contract for employment with the company in April of 2008, part of the agreement involved the transfer of 1,200,000 unvested Series B units in the company to him. That's a technical term for shares in the company that do not have a monetary value until the company has a public stock offering and until the employee has been vested for a year.
The Citizens Task Force on Wind Power called Adams' acceptance of those so-called "units of equity" into question. And while group spokesman Brad Blake is grateful for the attorney general's review, he says the public should remain skeptical about industrial wind and its political connections in Maine.
"We believe it's important for the public to understand that this is just another example of the way politicians and public officials work with private enterprise and they get rewarded for it," Blake says.
Blake says the wind industry wouldn't exist without heavy government subsidies and preferential treatment. He says his group has done "due diligence" in bringing Kurt Adams' potential conflict of interest to the attorney general's office. Now, he says, the issue to be investigated is whether wind development should be embraced as good public policy in Maine.
No comments:
Post a Comment