Healy Clean Coal Plant: Ask some damn questions!

(1/15/09) Last week we reported on a pending deal being pushed by the Palin administration (link below) that had all the signs of a questionable deal being driven by politics and insider payoffs. 

Today Governor Sarah Palin announced that her administration had come to a tentative agreement to sell the Healy Clean Coal Plant to the Golden Valley Electric Association after ten years of legal fighting which saw the state file suit against GVEA in 2005 for $167 million.

Department of Revenue Commissioner Pat Galvin stated that the “Terms of financing, specific sale agreements for the facility and a power sales agreement with all parties must be reached before a start up of HCCP can begin."

Yeah, before you sign that deal....just a few questions.

And we here at andrewhalcro.com try and operate by the old saying; Don't ask questions that you don't already know the answers to.

After tireless research through hundreds of pages of legislative records, GVEA Board minutes, personal financial disclosures, tax returns, campaign donation reports and conversations with key sources... we ask the following questions.

But more importantly, we ask that the Alaska Legislature ask the following questions.

Has anyone from Governor Palin's family benefited from consulting fees or any other monetary compensation from Golden Valley Electric or any legal firm or lobbyist representing GVEA?

Is it true that in January of 2007, Jim Palin, Todd's father and former GM of Matanuska Valley Electric met in Juneau with his daughter in-laws staff (including Mike Tibbles and John Bitney) to advise them not to trust AIDEA in their dispute with GVEA over the Healy plant?

Is it true that Jim Palin through Todd, lobbied to get rid of Mike Barry, AIDEA Chairman and Ron Miller, AIDEA Executive Director because GVEA saw those two as roadblocks to getting the Healy plant for cheap? It was under Barry & Miller, that the litigation against GVEA was instigated.

Is it true that Tom Irwin lobbied to have the Alaska Energy Authority moved from AIDEA into the Department of Natural Resources?

Is it true that Tom Irwin lobbied Governor Palin in 2007 to replace Ron Miller, AIDEA Director, with Steve Haagenson who was the General Manager of GVEA?

Is it true that Haagenson hired Irwin when he suddenly quit the Murkowski administration back in November of 2005 after a disagreement over Murkowski's handling of the natural gas pipeline contract?

Is it true that when it was pointed out that bringing Haagenson in directly from GVEA, who was in litigation with AIDEA over the Healy plant, would be a giant conflict of interest, Irwin pressed the administration to drop the lawsuit so they could hire Haagenson?

Is it true the Attorneys in the Department of Law convinced Palin that this was a bad idea?

Is it true that Irwin then changed tactics and had Galvin appoint John Kelsey, (Marty Rutherfords father) as Chairman of the AIDEA Board and then had Galvin tell AIDEA's staff and lawyers that he was going to settle the Healy litigation?

Is it true that Irwin played a major role in getting Haagenson eventually hired as the head of the Alaska Energy Authority, a subset of AIDEA?

The big questions regarding Rep. Mike Kelly?

What about Representative Mike Kelly (R-Fairbanks), who like Haagenson, was a former GVEA General Manager before he landed in the legislature?

It was under Kelly's watch as head of GVEA that the electrical co-op became embroiled in the Healy Clean Coal fiasco. It has been hanging around his neck like a dead weight for a decade.

Kelly has long been a steamroller in the legislature when it came to advocating that GVEA should get the Healy plant for cheap.

Even though Kelly was retired, he has maintained an influential role in GVEA operations. According to APOC records, Kelly was paid $75,000 in consulting fees by GVEA while he was a lawmaker (does this sound like Ben Stevens and VECO?) and in 2005 Kelly introduced HB163 which would have stripped AIDEA of the Healy plant and effectively given it to GVEA.

Kelly's 2008 APOC report shows significant financial benefits from GVEA.

He reported $120,000 in retirement income and $50,000 in deferred compensation. On GVEA's form 990's for 2005 and 2006, Kelly's deferred compensation is listed at $36,425, but it jumped to $50,000 in 2007. He is also a current board member of a GVEA subsidiary, Alasconnect, for which he claimed $2,000 a year in board fees.

In 2007 after becoming chair of the finance subcommittee for the Department of Commerce budget, Kelly used his position to submit a lengthy set of questions and requests of information for confidential information to AIDEA about the Healy plant agreements with Homer Electric and AIDEA's action regarding the lawsuit against GVEA.

Did Kelly provide this confidential information to GVEA?

After AIDEA sued GVEA in November 2005, GVEA asked the court to order mediation of the dispute. AIDEA argued against the this because they viewed it as a stall tactic to allow Kelly the opportunity to find a way to get GVEA the plant and avoid the litigation.

The court ordered mediation and AIDEA engaged in the process for over two years with GVEA. GVEA's negotiating team assured the mediator that they had the full authority to settle the dispute. At the end of the mediation, AIDEA had negotiated four agreements with GVEA that would allow AIDEA and Homer Electric access to the plant to start operations.

The AIDEA Board signed off on the agreements and they were scheduled to be voted on by the GVEA Board on March 24, 2008. 

The GVEA Board met at 6:00pm on March 24, 2008 in Fairbanks. They went into executive session to discuss the four agreements negotiated by their mediation team. 

Did Kelly participate in this executive session?

Did Kelly tell the board not to sign the agreements because he was working with the Palin administration to get a better deal for GVEA?

Did Kelly share the confidential information he obtained through his legislative office with the GVEA Board?

The GVEA Board came out of executive session and stated they would not sign the agreements their own mediation team had negotiated.

The meeting adjourned at 11:15pm, which would have been too late for Kelly to catch the flight back to Juneau.

The next morning the flight to Juneau was late. Since Kelly had not filed an excused absence, his tardiness to the House floor session was noted in the House Journal.

So did Kelly get legislative per diem for sabotaging the Healy deal?

And oh yeah, one more thing.

You might remember the complaint filed by Andree McLeod last fall against the Palin administration regarding the short cuts taken to get a Fairbanks resident named Tom Lamal hired as a DOT right-of-way agent. Emails from Frank Bailey, Palin's right hand man, showed he was working towards getting the rules changed to get Lamal hired.

As it turns out, Lamal's wife is a GVEA Vice President.

How much more can there be?

There are lots of questions regarding this deal....and the answers are right in front of us if only someone will ask.

Previous Healy post from last week:

http://www.andrewhalcro.com/healy_clean_coal_rewarding_cheats_and_con_men