“The double-dealing didn’t end there.”

You may recall that the federal “stimulus” package was supposed to create jobs by spending astronomical amounts of money on so-called “shovel ready” jobs. Some of the money went into projects for alternative energy. John Hood relates how things went down for one of the grant recipients, Sen. Kay Hagan’s family.

Forget the politics and read the story for what it says about big government.

In 2010, a company called JDC Manufacturing applied to the Energy Office for a $250,644 grant to replace light fixtures and gas furnaces and install rooftop solar panels at a 300,000-square-foot building it owned in Reidsville. The total cost of the project, JDC stated, would be $438,627, of which 57 percent would come from the taxpayers and the rest, $187,983, from JDC itself.

The company was owned by Kay Hagan’s husband Chip and two of his brothers. In the application, JDC claimed that the building’s infrastructure was outdated and that current energy costs had “prevented the tenant from growing their business as desired due to the energy operating costs.” Who was this cost-constrained tenant of the JDC building? A company also owned by Hagan family members called Plastic Revolutions, as Carolina Journal’s Don Carrington has reported. Chip Hagan serves on its board.

The double-dealing didn’t end there. In its application, JDC stated that its initial estimate of the cost of installing solar panels on the building were “based on quotes or commercially available prices” but that “the final project design and installation work will undergo an open bid once awardees are notified” about the status of the grant.

The same week that JDC submitted the application, however, Chip Hagan and his son Tilden founded yet another company, Solardyne, later renamed Green State Power. Somehow, this inexperienced company managed to win the contract to install the solar panels on JDC’s building, no doubt through an “open bid.” Interestingly, JDC had included its conflict-of-interest policy in its application for public funding. “Employees are to avoid any conflict of interest, even the appearance of a conflict of interest,” the policy stated. “The appearance of a conflict of interest can cause embarrassment to the company, jeopardizing the credibility of the company. Any conflict of interest, potential conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest should be reported to your supervisor immediately.”