… you aren’t interested at all in reporting about Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband’s receipt and use of stimulus money to hire Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband’s business, nor when the project came in under budget, in reporting on their failure to return $114,519 to the taxpayers — but you are interested in reporting on the state’s electrical utilities being allowed to charge customers for the higher corporate tax rate they no longer face.
The one, picking up in medias res because it’s such a bramblepatch of corruption I can’t quote it all succinctly:
… 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.”
Perhaps the conflict of interest was worth assuming, however, because it turned out that the JDC building retrofit cost $114,519 less than originally estimated. Unfortunately, the savings didn’t accrue to the taxpayers, who were still compelled to fork out the full $250,644. Instead, JDC spent only $73,464 of its pledged $187,983 investment.
The story doesn’t end there, believe it or not. A year later, JDC secured another government grant, this one for $50,000 from the Department of Agriculture, to put another solar array on the same building. Once again, Hagan-owned Green State Power got the contract.
In the 4-3 decision, the commission said that even though North Carolina’s corporate income tax rate was cut by the state legislature from 6.9 percent to 5 percent, utilities can continue charging customers at 6.9 percent and pocket the difference.
A trio of Democrats on the Utilities Commission refused to go along with their Republican colleagues, decrying this month’s ruling as a corporate windfall. Their dissent was couched in forceful language rarely seen in the staid proceedings of the utilities panel.
“There is no set end to this over-collection, which will continue indefinitely each year until each utility’s next general rate case,” the three Democrats wrote in their dissent. “Even then, ratepayers will never be refunded the over-collected funds; the utilities have simply been afforded an unearned gain at the expense of North Carolina ratepayers.”
The dispute is as much over principle and politics as it is over the pennies at play in monthly utility bills. N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat expected to run for governor in 2016, plans to appeal the commission’s ruling to the N.C. Court of Appeals. The N.C. Public Staff, an independent agency that represents utility customers, is weighing an appeal as well, agency Director Chris Ayers said.
Aren’t both outrageous? Isn’t cronyism that allows the politically connected to profit off the backs of the people just flat wrong? Or is the utilities’ benefit at the expense of ratepayers only outrageous insofar as it provides avenue to criticize Republican appointees and boost a Democratic A[spiring] G[overnor]’s political chances? Such an avenue would be lacking in the other story, That Which Shall Not Be Named.
There’s a bonus “you might be a progressive media if” for being upset that ratepayers continue to front the higher tax rate when you were foursquare opposed to cutting that tax rate in the first place.
