WILDLIFE REPORT

The critters are on the move. Thirty (30) wild turkeys, 4 (four) deer, and now a HUGE skunk wandering down the driveway. That skunk was so big, the white stripe was as easy as pie to spot. Checking all around the house to see if it kept on wandering next door provided no relief. So I went out on the back porch and dropped a few pieces of wood. That's the last critter I want to burrow into the leaves under the deck. This critter-capturing kitty of mine would be sure to try to catch it and bring it inside to play.

GREAT NEWS

Two pieces of great news today:

1. Books-a-Million (BAM!) will open in Bangor today. BAM! took over the lease of the former Borders store at the Bangor Mall. Today's opening is planned to be a quiet event with a Grand Opening later on in November. Dennis, the former manager of Borders, has been hired to be the manager of BAM! and many of the former Borders employees have also been hired.

The Cafe was being installed this past Tuesday as this writer drove by to check on the store's progress. While talking with one of the corporate people on site, I also learned that BAM! will be available for author book-signings. This is GREAT news for Maine authors who are already published and those of us working toward that goal. Stay tuned for more news.

2. AUTOWORKS is so busy in its new location people are booking appointments one and two weeks ahead. The location is clean with an office right in front - just walk up the steps at the front door and there you are. Robbie, Jimmy and Sam are there to help and greet. Such a great business to have here in Eddington. Of course, if the job is small and the need great, with a little patience, people can leave their car overnight and maybe have the service done in 24-hours. Good people - great work quality - and personalized service. You can't beat that.

IT'S A WILD AND AMAZING SEASON

Fall is here in all her splendor. The trees stating showing off on Rooks Road even before Route 9 joined the fashion parade. Of course, with the recent rain and wind, many of those leaves have fallen, creating a colorful carpet on driveways and lawns. With the projection of possible snow by the end of this week (may it stay in the mountains, Lord) all those leaves need to be raked up and relocated somewhere. (Oh my aching back!) As it is, I discovered two grubs alongside the edging of one of the gardens. NOT nice creatures and the last thing I would want multiplying on my lawn. So the leaves have to go or there may be nothing but masses of dead grass in the spring.

Speaking of creatures - just a week and a half ago I had 30 (thirty!) wild turkeys in the driveway. They migrate from east to west - or vice versa - in their pursuit of acorns and gravel - and my driveway provides plenty of both. Except this year I have a two-year-old kitty. She's been very good at catching live chipmunks and mice and then bringing them into the house as playmates! Not my plan. Unlike a dog who might drop them if told emphatically "No!", Poli pays absolutely no attention if she is still outdoors when caught. But after five chipmunks and one mouse, she no longer has free access into the house.

Which is why she was sitting on the back porch the first time the turkeys came to call - in a grouping of a mere fifteen. I could just imagine her thinking, "They aren't going to fit my mouth." As they began to wander off, she followed - tracking and skulking - as she hungered down into the leaves. With her coloring, it is difficult to spot her.

When the thirty turkeys showed up, she was already out amongst the leaves directly on the path the turkeys used. Many people don't realize turkeys have a sharp talon at the back of their feet. If one of them decided to attack a cat. the cat would lose. So I watched from the window to see what she would do - fully prepared to take on the turkeys myself if they went after Poli.

She stayed low to the ground and watched as the flock pecked and hopped and scurried around, the way turkeys do. Soon five started wandering north up the driveway. Within moments another five retreated to the side lot from whence they had come. With only twenty left in the driveway, spreading out and pecking, Poli decided it was time to "herd the herd." Front part of her body close to the ground, her hind quarters raised, she slowly moved from side to side as she advanced. The turkeys paid her no mind until suddenly she was within inches. Immediately the leader raised his head - "Danger. Danger."

Turkeys spread out, some flying up into the trees, every one of them moving faster than they had since arriving. Poli's head came up as she tracked their movements. Her tail-less back quarters started twitching. "Oh Lord," I thought. "It is much too soon for a Thanksgiving dinner."

I opened the door (as much to scare off the turkeys as to call Poli closer to safety). One "Poli" and she immediately turned and ran pell-mell for me and the door. Turkeys and kitty safe for one more day.

Fortunately she was still in the house Sunday morning at 7:30 when four deer decided to move through following the same path as that previously used by the turkeys. I'm just not sure Poli could handle those flirty white-tails.

I know I could not handle a kitty trying to herd deer.

A PRIME EXAMPLE OF AMERICAN CORPORATE GREED

The Cover Story in the November 2011 issue of Bloomberg Markets identified one of the best examples of American Corporate Greed I have ever read. The Koch brothers enjoy lives of extreme comfort - at the expense of American financial and democratic security. And we need to be worried about Al Qaida? Read what follows and make your own decision.
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In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts.

“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”

She immediately notified her supervisors in the U.S. A week later, Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries dispatched an investigative team to look into her findings, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue.

By September of that year, the researchers had found evidence of improper payments to secure contracts in six countries dating back to 2002, authorized by the business director of the company’s Koch-Glitsch affiliate in France.

“Those activities constitute violations of criminal law,” Koch Industries wrote in a Dec. 8, 2008, letter giving details of its findings. The letter was made public in a civil court ruling in France in September 2010; the document has never before been reported by the media.

Egorova-Farines wasn’t rewarded for bringing the illicit payments to the company’s attention. Her superiors removed her from the inquiry in August 2008 and fired her in June 2009, calling her incompetent, even after Koch’s investigators substantiated her findings. She sued Koch-Glitsch in France for wrongful termination.

Obsessed with Secrecy

Koch-Glitsch is part of a global empire run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have taken a small oil company they inherited from their father, Fred, after his death in 1967, and built it into a chemical, textile, trading and refining conglomerate spanning more than 50 countries.

Koch Industries is obsessed with secrecy, to the point that it discloses only an approximation of its annual revenue -- $100 billion a year -- and says nothing about its profits.

The most visible part of Koch Industries is its consumer brands, including Lycra fiber and Stainmaster carpet. Georgia- Pacific LLC, which Koch owns, makes Dixie cups, Brawny paper towels and Quilted Northern bath tissue.

Charles, 75, and David, 71, each worth about $20 billion, are prominent financial backers of groups that believe that excessive regulation is sapping the competitiveness of American business. They inherited their anti-government leanings from their father.

Abolishing Social Security

Fred was an early adviser to the founder of the anti- communist John Birch Society, which fought against the civil rights movement and the United Nations. Charles and David have supported the Tea Party, a loosely organized group that aims to shrink the size of government and cut federal spending.

These are long-standing tenets for the Kochs. In 1980, David Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian ticket, pledging to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve System, welfare, minimum wage laws and federal agencies -- including the Department of Energy, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency.

What many people don’t know is how the Kochs’ anti- regulation political ideology has influenced the way they conduct business.

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

The ‘Koch Method’

Internal company documents show that the company made those sales through foreign subsidiaries, thwarting a U.S. trade ban. Koch Industries units have also rigged prices with competitors, lied to regulators and repeatedly run afoul of environmental regulations, resulting in five criminal convictions since 1999 in the U.S. and Canada.

From 1999 through 2003, Koch Industries was assessed more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments. In December 1999, a civil jury found that Koch Industries had taken oil it didn’t pay for from federal land by mismeasuring the amount of crude it was extracting. Koch paid a $25 million settlement to the U.S.

Phil Dubose, a Koch employee who testified against the company said he and his colleagues were shown by their managers how to steal and cheat -- using techniques they called the Koch Method.

Refused to Falsify

In 1999, a Texas jury imposed a $296 million verdict on a Koch pipeline unit -- the largest compensatory damages judgment in a wrongful death case against a corporation in U.S. history. The jury found that the company’s negligence had led to a butane pipeline rupture that fueled an explosion that killed two teenagers.

Former Koch employees in the U.S. and Europe have testified or told investigators that they’ve witnessed wrongdoing by the company or have been asked by Koch managers to take what they saw as improper actions.

Sally Barnes-Soliz, who’s now an investigator for the State Department of Labor and Industries in Washington, says that when she worked for Koch, her bosses and a company lawyer at the Koch refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, asked her to falsify data for a report to the state on uncontrolled emissions of benzene, a known cause of cancer. Barnes-Soliz, who testified to a federal grand jury, says she refused to alter the numbers.

“They didn’t know what to do with me,” she says. “They were really kind of baffled that I had ethics.”

Koch’s refinery unit pleaded guilty in 2001 to a federal felony charge of lying to regulators and paid $20 million in fines and penalties.

Corporate Cultures

“How much lawless behavior are we going to tolerate from any one company?” asks David Uhlmann, who oversaw the prosecution of the Koch refinery division when he was chief of the environmental crimes unit at the U.S. Department of Justice. “Corporate cultures reflect the priorities of the corporation and its senior officials.”

Koch Industries declined to make either Charles Koch, who lives near corporate headquarters in Wichita, or David Koch, who lives in New York, available for interviews.

Melissa Cohlmia, Koch’s director of corporate communications, said in an e-mailed statement that the company has developed a good relationship with environmental regulators and now complies with all rules. Cohlmia says the company has learned lessons from past mistakes, including the improper payment scheme that Koch outlined in its letter filed in French court.

‘Steps to Correct’

“We are proud to be a major American employer and manufacturing company with about 50,000 U.S. employees,” she wrote. “Given the regulatory complexity of our business, we will, like any business, have issues that arise. When we fall short of our goals, we take steps to correct and address the issues in order to ensure compliance.”

Cohlmia says Koch fired the employees and sales agents involved in the illicit payments and strengthened internal controls.

Regarding sales to Iran, she wrote, “During the relevant time frame covered in your article, U.S. law allowed foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies to engage in trade involving countries subject to U.S. trade sanctions, including Iran, under certain conditions.”

Koch has since stopped all of its units from trading with Iran, she says.

Lobbying Washington

The Koch brothers have vaulted into the American political spotlight in recent years. Koch Industries has spent more than $50 million to lobby in Washington since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks political donations. The company opposed derivatives regulation and greenhouse gas limits.

The brothers have backed a foundation that has trained thousands of Tea Party activists. The Tea Party, a popular movement whose name stands for Taxed Enough Already, has grown into a potent force in national politics. Sixty representatives of Congress, out of a total of 435, identify themselves as Tea Party members. Virtually every Republican candidate for president -- including Texas Governor Rick Perry and Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann -- has solicited the group’s support.

Integrity and Compliance

Koch Industries’ political action committee, KochPAC, donated $50,000 to Texans for Rick Perry last year for his gubernatorial campaign, according to the Texas Ethics Commission. It has also donated to support Bachmann’s congressional campaigns, Federal Election Commission records show.

The company tells all of its employees around the world that its top two values, which it calls Guiding Principles, are integrity and compliance. Koch Industries and its subsidiaries have won 436 awards for safety, environmental excellence, community and customer service and innovation since January 2009, Cohlmia says.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has recognized several of the company’s units for their commitment to the workplace, the company says. Koch Industries has also supported charitable causes in Wichita and beyond, including the Kansas Special Olympics and Big Brothers Big Sisters. The company has also helped enlistees in the U.S. Army Reserve.

Koch Industries has donated millions of dollars to the Nature Conservancy, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Reputation is Critical

David Koch has contributed more than $135 million to cultural institutions, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Koch Industries zealously guards its public image.

“A company’s reputation is critical to how it will be treated by others and to its long-term success,” Charles Koch wrote in “The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company” (Wiley, 2007). “We must build a positive reputation based on reality, or others will create one for us based on speculation or animus and we won’t like what they create.”

The illicit payments uncovered by Ludmila Egorova-Farines raised the specter of a new blow to the company’s effort to improve its reputation following criminal convictions and civil penalties.

Avoiding Scandal

The company wanted to avoid a bribery scandal similar to that of Siemens AG (SIE), says Ged Horner, a managing director at Koch-Glitsch in the U.K. from 2002 until he retired in 2010.

“The only thing that would seriously impact the profitability and continuity of Koch Industries was a compliance issue,” Horner says.

In November 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice and German prosecutors opened an investigation into bribery by Munich-based Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering company. Siemens and three of its subsidiaries pleaded guilty in December 2008 to charges of violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act from 1998 to 2007.

Siemens paid $1.6 billion in penalties, admitting it had paid bribes to companies in Argentina, Bangladesh, Iraq and Venezuela.

“Koch decided that if it could happen to Siemens, it could happen to them,” Horner says.

Koch Chemical Technology Group, a Koch Industries subsidiary run by David Koch, hired Egorova-Farines in April 2008 for the newly created position of compliance and ethics manager for Europe and Asia.

French Investigation

The division, which makes distillation, pollution control and water filtration equipment, recruited her from accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where she was a consultant for four years on integrating corporate cultures after mergers. As soon as she joined Koch, the company flew her to Wichita to attend an internal compliance conference, she says.

The company then asked her to investigate Koch-Glitsch in France because it had heard that managers were awarding salary increases inappropriately, Egorova-Farines says. The company never mentioned anything about improper payments for contracts when it gave her that assignment, she says. She declines to discuss the details of her findings, saying it would be unprofessional.

The specifics of illicit payments for contracts by Koch- Glitsch can be found in two French labor court cases. The complaints were brought separately by Egorova-Farines and Leon Mausen, business director of Koch-Glitsch France from 1998 to 2008.

Illicit Payments

Koch-Glitsch fired Mausen on Dec. 8, 2008, sending him a termination letter that described illicit payments from 2002 to 2008 in Algeria, Egypt, India, Morocco, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. In the Middle East, Koch-Glitsch paid what the termination letter describes as an exceptionally high commission of 23 percent to one of its sales agents.

“A portion of that money was intended to pay a customer’s employee in order to secure the contract,” Koch wrote.

The customer was an unnamed Egyptian company that was partially owned by the state. Koch-Glitsch made similar payments to win other contracts with public and private companies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Koch wrote in its letter to Mausen.

Koch-Glitsch gave envelopes stuffed with cash to a Moroccan company, Koch wrote in its letter. Koch-Glitsch also made an improper payment to secure a contract with a Moroccan government organization, Koch wrote. The company made similar payments to an unnamed Nigerian government agency to win contracts, Koch wrote.

Koch Blamed Employee

Koch-Glitsch inflated its bid price to a private company in India in 2008, the letter said. A Koch employee explained the reason in an e-mail copied to Mausen and dated Feb. 6, 2008: “Add an extra 2 percent for a third person whose name I would rather give you only on the phone at this time.”

A Koch-Glitsch agent increased the commission paid to an Algerian agent in 2007 and 2008 to cover what Koch described as an unlawful payment to secure a deal with an unnamed French company.

Koch’s spokeswoman Cohlmia says Koch Industries acted firmly and decisively in response to what it had learned.

In its Dec. 8, 2008, termination letter to Mausen, Koch blamed him for the illegal payments. In July 2009, Mausen sued Koch for severance and performance pay in the Arles Labor Court in southern France.

On Sept. 27, 2010, the court said Mausen hadn’t acted on his own.

“It was not Mr. Mausen alone who was giving authorizations,” the court wrote.

Company policy required approval from other Koch-Glitsch managers, including Christoph Ender, the president of Koch- Glitsch for Europe and Asia, the court said.

‘Without Doing Due Diligence’

“Ender, manager of Koch-Glitsch France, as well as the controllers and auditors who were assisting him, allowed such business practices developed with Mr. Mausen to continue without doing due diligence in their reviews concerning the payment of commissions and the final beneficiaries of said commissions,” the labor court wrote.

An appeals court in Aix-en-Provence issued a second ruling on June 14, 2011, saying the company couldn’t justify terminating Mausen for the payment scheme because his managers had been aware of the practices for more than 60 days before he was fired. The court ordered Koch-Glitsch to pay Mausen 150,808 euros ($206,170).

Mausen declined to comment, beyond saying he disputed Koch’s arguments in court. Ender, who is now a Koch-Glitsch executive in Wichita, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Koch’s Cohlmia says Ender “had no knowledge of Mr. Mausen’s misconduct at the time it occurred, as Mr. Mausen concealed it from him.”

Initially On Track

As for Egorova-Farines, her career was initially on track after she exposed bribery. Koch Chemical promoted her to a permanent position after her trial period expired in mid-2008, court records show. She was dispatched to offices in Germany, Russia and Switzerland, she says.

“I worked hard to drive cultural change to make these units compliant,” she says.

Egorova-Farines was hospitalized for seven weeks starting in February 2009, according to the decision in her lawsuit against Koch-Glitsch for wrongful termination.

The company fired her on June 16, 2009, saying later in court that she didn’t have the skills she’d listed on her resume and that she had failed to share documents with others at the company, according to the court record. She contested Koch’s arguments.

Court Ruling

Neither Egorova-Farines nor the labor court knew at the time that Koch had cited the company’s six-year pattern of improper payments in its termination letter to Mausen, she says. The court ruled against her on Feb. 11. She filed an appeal two months later in Paris.

She said in court that Koch had harassed her and retaliated against her for uncovering the payment scheme. She asked to be reinstated in her Koch job and paid for the time she was out of work. Egorova-Farines, who was born in London, now runs a business practices consulting firm in Paris.

Koch’s Cohlmia says the labor court found that the company treated Egorova-Farines fairly and provided her with chances to perform adequately.

The payments to win contracts documented by Koch investigators may violate U.S. law, says Sara Sun Beale, a professor at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina. She says Koch’s termination letter to Mausen gives clear guidance to federal prosecutors.

‘Smoking Gun’

“It sounds like a smoking gun,” says Beale, who co- authored “Federal Criminal Law and Its Enforcement” (Thompson West, 2010). “It really should get the Justice Department’s attention. When you have a smoking gun, you launch an investigation.”

Such a probe would fall under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that makes it illegal for companies and their subsidiaries to pay bribes to government officials and employees of state-owned companies.

Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney says the agency won’t confirm or deny the existence of any investigation.

While Koch-Glitsch was conducting its internal probe of illicit payments for contracts, the U.S. government was investigating Koch’s European unit on another front: sales to Iran.

On Aug. 14, 2008, investigators from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security met with George Bentu, who had worked as a sales engineer from 2001 to 2007 for Koch-Glitsch in Germany, Bentu says. In a four-hour interview at the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, the officials asked about documents showing details of the company’s trades with Iran, he says.

Legal Sidestep

Homeland Security spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez declined to comment.

Internal company records show that Koch Industries used its foreign subsidiary to sidestep a U.S. trade ban barring American companies from selling materials to Iran. Koch-Glitsch offices in Germany and Italy continued selling to Iran until as recently as 2007, the records show.

The company’s products helped build a methanol plant for Zagros Petrochemical Co., a unit of Iran’s state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co., the documents show. The facility, in the coastal city of Bandar Assaluyeh, is now the largest methanol plant in the world, according to IHS Inc., an Englewood, Colorado-based provider of chemicals, energy and economic data.

Engineer Challenged Sales

“Every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else, they did,” Bentu, 46, says.

Bentu, a German engineer who earned his master’s degree in chemical engineering from Montana State University in Bozeman in 1990, joined Koch-Glitsch in 2001. His duties included drawing up bids for potential buyers of the company’s distillation equipment, which is used in making fuels, fertilizers, detergents and other products.

Bentu says he had been working at Koch-Glitsch in Viernheim, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Frankfurt, for two months when he first saw an order destined for Iran. Concerned that the transaction might run afoul of U.S. law, Bentu asked his manager about it, he says. Bentu says his boss told him not to worry, that the company’s U.S. lawyers made sure the deals with Iran were legal.

U.S. companies have been banned from trading with Iran since 1995, when President Bill Clinton declared it a threat to national security. Iran supports Iraqi militants and Taliban fighters as well as terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, according to the U.S. State Department.

Getting Around Ban

Koch Industries took elaborate steps to ensure that its U.S.-based employees weren’t involved in the sales to Iran, internal documents show.

Koch Industries may not have violated the law if no U.S. people or company divisions facilitated trades with Iran, says Avi Jorisch, a Treasury Department policy adviser from 2005 to 2008. That’s impossible to determine without a complete investigation, Jorisch says.

Internal Koch-Glitsch correspondence shows that the company coordinated with Koch Industries lawyers in the U.S. to make sure that American employees didn’t work on sales to Iran. Elena Rigon, now Koch-Glitsch compliance manager for Europe, based in Italy, in December 2000 addressed a memo outlining compliance guidelines to company managers in her region.

‘Axis of Evil’

In another e-mail, Rigon said all offices had to go through a checklist for each estimate quoted for materials headed to Iran.

“Your staff shall send this form to me since I have to send it to the lawyers in the USA as part of the compliance program,” Rigon wrote in the e-mail. “If somebody happens to find out that any U.S. persons are involved in this project or U.S. material is delivered to Iran you CANNOT quote.”

Rigon declined to comment.

“Koch-Glitsch had protocols in place that were consistent with applicable U.S. laws allowing such sales at the foreign subsidiary level,” Koch’s Cohlmia says.

In his annual State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, President George W. Bush said that Iran was part of what he called the “Axis of Evil.”

A year later, in his Jan. 28, 2003, address to Congress, Bush said, “In Iran, we continue to see a government that represses its people, pursues weapons of mass destruction and supports terror.”

Soliciting Iranian Orders

The following day, Koch-Glitsch was sent a purchase order to supply petrochemical equipment for the Zagros plant, which was being designed and built by two engineering firms, Pidec in Iran and Lurgi in Germany, according to company documents.

On May 31, 2004, Koch-Glitsch secured another contract for 1.2 million Euros, to help expand the Zagros facility. The plant helped Iran turn its vast natural gas reserves into methanol, which is used for making plastics, paints and chemicals.

The Italian office of Koch-Glitsch sought work on other projects in Iran -- the expansion of the Abadan refinery, the country’s largest, and the development of South Pars, part of the world’s largest natural gas field, the documents show.

Koch-Glitsch told employees in 2006 that the company was winding down business in Iran, Bentu says. At that point, he says, his bosses still asked him to work on Iran bids. He says he told them he was no longer willing to sign off on such work, leading to arguments between Bentu and his managers.

‘Totally Betrayed’

Bentu says he felt dismayed because Koch Industries clearly tells all of its employees around the world that integrity is the company’s No. 1 value.

“You feel totally betrayed,” Bentu says. “Everything Koch stood for was a lie.”

Bentu, who was earning about 49,000 euros a year, says the company forced him out in April 2007 and paid him 25,000 euros severance.

In 2009, Bentu was interviewed as part of a probe by the Bundeskartellamt, the German antitrust agency. It was looking into whether Koch-Glitsch had collaborated with a rival, Montz GmbH, a smaller petrochemical equipment maker in nearby Hilden, to rig bids they made to supply products to companies.

In November 2010, Koch-Glitsch and Montz each paid 250,000 euros as part of a settlement with the regulator for sharing information from December 2002 to August 2008. The German regulator said the violations were a minor infraction. Koch- Glitsch closed its office in Viernheim in 2009, Bentu says. Several former employees went to work for Montz.

Guenther Frey, general manager for Montz, declined to comment.

Cohlmia says of the agency’s ruling, “The decision did not find that Koch-Glitsch GmbH engaged in price fixing or any illegal behavior.”

Felony Conviction

This wasn’t Koch Industries’ first brush with complaints of improper competition. In October 2000, the FBI secretly recorded the telephone calls of Troy Stanley Sr., director of textile staples at KoSa, then a Luxembourg company with its main office in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Koch Industries and a Mexican company established KoSa as a joint venture in 1998 to buy the Hoechst AG unit that produced polyester staples, which are used in making textiles. KoSa pleaded guilty in October 2002 to a felony charge of conspiracy to restrain trade and paid a $28.5 million fine.

Stanley pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to restrain trade in December 2004 and was sentenced to one year of probation and a $5,000 fine.

‘Anti-trust Conspiracy’

“Officers, directors, managers or employees participated in the conspiracy” between September 1999 and January 2001, KoSa admitted in the plea agreement.

The conspiracy began before KoSa bought the business and continued during its ownership, Stanley testified. Koch bought out its partner in 2001. The criminal activity occurred while Koch was a 50 percent owner.

During the next eight years, Koch Industries paid $76 million to settle antitrust claims brought by KoSa’s customers, and $59 million in legal fees, according to court records. KoSa is now part of Koch’s Invista unit.

A prosecution of KoSa by Canada’s attorney general for price fixing followed in August 2003. KoSa pleaded guilty and paid a C$1.5 million fine.

Cohlmia says a KoSa subsidiary “unknowingly bought into an ongoing antitrust conspiracy.” Once the company found out about the wrongdoing, it stopped the conspiracy and cooperated with the U.S. Justice Department, she says.

Benzene Emissions

The price-fixing convictions came after years of investigations, environmental lawsuits and fines that had plagued Koch’s oil pipeline and refining divisions.

In April 1996, Koch environmental technician Sally Barnes- Soliz walked into the offices of Texas regulators in Corpus Christi and told them the company had lied about spewing benzene into the air.

Koch Refining Co. had recruited Barnes-Soliz in 1991 to work in the safety department at the company’s Corpus Christi refinery. Barnes-Soliz, then 30, had earned a bachelor’s degree in science and environmental health and a Master of Science in industrial hygiene at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

“I loved that job,” she says, describing how she helped protect plant workers and neighborhood residents from the many hazards at the refinery. “It’s important to me that people are safe and their job is not the reason they die.”

Federal rules in 1995 required the plant, one of two refineries Koch owns in Corpus Christi, to reduce benzene emissions to less than 6 metric tons a year. Benzene, a chemical compound refined from crude oil, was found to cause leukemia in 1928 by two Italian doctors who detected the cancer in a worker exposed to benzene for five years.

False Report

Four federal agencies -- the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration -- say that benzene is a cause of cancer.

On Jan. 6, 1995, Koch’s refining unit informed the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, or TNRCC, that it had installed a new anti-pollution device called a Thermatrix that used flameless heat to burn off the benzene. The machine lacked sufficient capacity for the job, Barnes-Soliz says, and refinery workers disconnected it within days.

“The refinery was just hemorrhaging benzene into the atmosphere,” she says.

Three months after disconnecting the machine, Koch filed a quarterly report with Texas regulators, while concealing that it had violated the emission rules.

Pressured to Change

On Aug. 17, 1995, Koch Industries attorney Vincent Mietlicki wrote a memo to another company lawyer, Thomas Meek, saying the refinery had given the state incorrect information about its uncontrolled benzene emissions.

“I think it goes without saying that there is a need to correct our first quarterly report which is misleading and inaccurate,” he wrote.

That December, a refinery manager asked Barnes-Soliz to tally the plant’s annual benzene emissions for a report to state regulators, Barnes-Soliz says. She found 91 metric tons of uncontrolled benzene emissions, more than 15 times higher than what the rules allowed.

“I redid the calculation a lot of times,” Barnes-Soliz says.

Those levels of emissions could increase the cancer risk to refinery employees and the public, she says. Barnes-Soliz reported the results in a document dated Jan. 4, 1996, to Mietlicki, the same lawyer who had written the memo calling out the inaccuracies in the quarterly report Koch filed with the state. She says Mietlicki and other Koch executives pressured her to lower the figures in her report.

Falsified Document

“There were a lot of meetings to try and get me to change the number,” she says. “It was hard, but I held firm to my convictions.”

Barnes-Soliz’s bosses went around her. On April 8, 1996, Koch reported to Texas regulators that its Corpus Christi plant had uncontrolled emissions of 0.61 metric tons for 1995, or 1/149th the quantity she had found.

“When I saw they had actually falsified that document, I had no recourse but to notify the authorities,” Barnes-Soliz says.

On April 18, 1996, on her lunch break, she drove to the state’s TNRCC office and reported that Koch had lied about its benzene emissions. By the time Barnes-Soliz walked in, environmental regulators were already investigating Koch in Corpus Christi.

Oil Slick

The EPA had sued Koch Industries a year earlier for a series of pipeline leaks in several states, including one that left a 12-mile-long oil slick on Nueces and Corpus Christi bays in October 1994. Her statement triggered another probe by state regulators and the FBI.

During the next three years, investigators compiled evidence that included hundreds of internal memos about benzene emissions. In 1999, Koch’s lawyers tried to stop prosecutors from using the documents in court.

Koch argued that records of the company’s internal investigation regarding benzene rules were protected by attorney-client privilege. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack in Corpus Christi rejected that claim, ruling that the privilege doesn’t apply when used to help commit a crime or fraud. She singled out Mietlicki.

‘Front Man’

“The government has submitted evidence which indicates that Koch was intentionally using Mietlicki and his investigation and expertise in reference not to prior wrongdoing, but to future wrongdoing,” the judge wrote. “The February memo strongly suggests that Koch was using Mietlicki (and his investigation and expertise) as a ‘front man’ to impede the TNRCC from ascertaining the extent of its noncompliance.”

The February memo was sealed by the court.

A federal grand jury issued a 97-count indictment against Koch Petroleum Group, Mietlicki and three refinery managers on Sept. 28, 2000. Koch Petroleum Group pleaded guilty to a felony charge of lying to the government about its benzene emissions in April 2001.

Judge Jack fined Koch Petroleum $10 million and ordered that it pay another $10 million to fund environmental projects in south Texas. Koch earned $176 million in profit from the Corpus Christi plant in 1995, prosecutors told the court. The company said in a hearing that it would have cost $7 million to comply with the benzene emission regulation.

Koch Petroleum changed its name to Flint Hills Resources in 2002.

In the agreement to plead guilty, prosecutors dropped the charges against the four individuals.

‘Ultimately Collapsed’

Koch spokeswoman Cohlmia says the company reported its compliance issues to the state before a whistle-blower did so. She says the federal case was flawed, citing testimony by a prosecution expert witness.

“The government’s case ultimately collapsed after the company finally had an opportunity to challenge the government’s key expert witness,” she says.

Uhlmann, the federal prosecutor who led the probe, says Koch’s after-the-fact response is a public relations whitewash.

“The Koch case was a classic case of environmental crime, significant violations of law occurring alongside widespread efforts to conceal those violations, which Koch has admitted,” Uhlmann says. He now teaches at the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor.

Empty Office

Mietlicki, who is now assistant principal at John Paul II High School in Corpus Christi, says he can’t comment on details of the case.

“I know all of my actions as a lawyer, throughout all my years of practice, were nothing but honest and truthful,” he says.

After the company found out that Barnes-Soliz had tipped off state regulators, Koch stripped her of her responsibilities and moved her to an empty office with no tasks and no e-mail access, she says.

“They were pressuring me to quit,” she says.

She left the company in July 1996. Barnes-Soliz sued Koch in January 1997, saying the company harassed and mistreated her after she became a whistle-blower. Koch settled the lawsuit in July 1999 for an undisclosed amount.

The Corpus Christi case was one of a series of challenges Koch Industries faced in the 1990s over environmental issues. In 1997, a company now owned by ConocoPhillips sued Koch for toxic waste dumping at a refinery in Duncan, Oklahoma.

‘Replete With Evidence’

In March 1998, U.S. District Court Judge Vicki Miles- LaGrange in Oklahoma City ordered Koch to pay for 15 percent of the cleanup costs for dumping at the site between 1946 and 1953. That decision was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in May 2000.

“The record is replete with evidence Koch used unlined ditches, pits and ponds to dispose of hazardous waste at the site,” the appeals court ruled, finding that Koch had tainted groundwater. “The pollution of any Oklahoma waters, including groundwater, has been prohibited by state statute since the early 1900s -- well before Koch’s waste disposal activity at the refinery.”

By March 2007, Koch Industries had paid just $440,899 and still owed $2.97 million for its share of the cleanup, Conoco told the court.

“Koch simply refuses to pay its share as ordered by this court,” Conoco said.

Companies Settled

The two companies settled in February 2009. Terms weren’t disclosed.

Cohlmia says, “We understand that appropriate remediation is occurring and Koch has met all of its obligations with respect to this matter.”

A Koch unit in Rosemount, Minnesota, pleaded guilty in 1999 to two federal misdemeanors of violating the Clean Water Act and paid $8 million in fines and penalties. The company used fire hydrants to pump more than a million gallons of wastewater contaminated with ammonia onto the ground.

Koch also increased its dumping of wastewater on weekends when it didn’t monitor discharges, circumventing the reporting requirement of its permit, the EPA said. Koch also admitted that it negligently released between 200,000 gallons (757 kiloliters) and 600,000 gallons of aviation fuel into a nearby wetland.

Cohlmia says the company cooperated with state and federal regulators to resolve the Rosemount issues and has met all of its obligations.

“In March, 1999, Koch Petroleum Group took full responsibility for past underlying discharges,” she says.

Koch Industries also spent much of the 1990s defending itself against what a U.S. Senate subcommittee called a widespread scheme to steal oil on Indian land.

Twin Brother

The Senate held hearings in May 1989 after Bill Koch, David Koch’s twin brother, told a U.S. Senate special committee on investigations that Koch Industries was stealing oil on American Indian reservations, cheating the federal government of royalties.

Bill Koch had a long-standing feud with his brothers after his failed attempt to take over the company in the early 1980s. He sold his shares in June 1983 and later lost a lawsuit claiming he’d been shortchanged.

The Senate committee sent investigators to Oklahoma to secretly observe oil companies, including Koch, buying crude on Indian land. The federal agents hid in ditches, crouched behind scrub cedars and ducked behind cows to avoid detection by Koch Oil’s purchasers, FBI agent Richard Elroy testified to the committee in May 1989.

‘Theft is Widespread’

The investigators caught Koch Oil’s employees falsifying records so that the company would get more crude than it paid for, shortchanging Indian families, Elroy said. Koch’s records showed that the company took 1.95 million barrels of oil it didn’t pay for from 1986 to 1988, according to data compiled by the Senate.

“The theft is widespread and pervasive, and these people are being horribly victimized,” Elroy testified.

Elroy told the committee that Charles Koch gave a deposition that said that no one could make exact measurements.

“There was a lot of uncertainty and tremendous variations,” Elroy quoted Koch as saying. The full deposition is sealed, which is committee policy.

The committee concluded in a November 1989 report that Koch Oil had engaged in a widespread, sophisticated scheme to steal millions of barrels of oil. The Senate referred the case to the Justice Department, which convened a grand jury that never indicted the company.

“We believe that our practices were consistent with industry practice,” Cohlmia says.

The Civil Trial

Bill Koch brought a lawsuit on behalf of U.S. taxpayers, claiming that Koch Industries’ scheme defrauded the government of royalties. The case came to trial in 1999. Former company employees testified that Koch Industries trained them to steal.

Phil Dubose, who worked for Koch Industries from 1968 to 1994, told the jury how the scheme worked.

“The Koch Method is to cheat the producer out of crude oil,” he said.

He testified that he was able to steal 2,000 barrels a month from one customer.

“You used every available tool to mismeasure the crude oil in Koch’s favor,” says Dubose, who is now retired.

Charles Koch testified in the trial, saying the company had the highest standards.

“By 1988, I thought we had developed the best measurement approach, controls and so on of any crude oil purchaser in the industry,” Koch said. “And that’s why we became the No. 1 crude oil purchaser in the United States.”

24,587 False Claims

Two days before Christmas 1999, the jury delivered the verdict: Koch Industries had made 24,587 false claims in buying oil, underpaying the U.S. government for royalties on Native American land from 1985 to 1989. Koch paid the U.S. $25 million to settle the case in 2001.

The Koch brothers, meanwhile, reached an agreement, with undisclosed terms, dropping all litigation against each other.

While the Koch brothers battled over oil, Koch Industries clashed with regulators over its failure to properly maintain its pipelines. In 1995, the EPA sued the company, saying poor maintenance resulted in corrosion that contributed to hundreds of spills.

The following year, before the EPA case was resolved, a leak in a Koch butane pipeline led to an explosion that killed two teenagers.

Burned Alive

On Aug. 24, 1996, Danielle Smalley and her high school friend and neighbor Jason Stone, both 17, smelled gas outside Smalley’s mobile home in rural Lively, Texas, 50 miles southeast of Dallas. The house had no telephone, so they decided to drive the Smalley family’s pickup truck to a neighbor’s home to call 911.

They never made it.

The truck stalled after the couple drove into a fog-like cloud, says Danielle’s father, Danny Smalley, who watched them drive away. It was butane vapor, leaking from a corroded steel pipeline. Seconds later, as Danielle restarted the truck, the gas ignited into a fireball, burning Danielle and Jason to death.

Smalley’s father sued Koch Industries in 1997 in the Kaufman County, Texas, district court for the wrongful death of his daughter.

‘Definitely Responsible’

“I will tell you Koch Industries is definitely responsible for the death of Danielle Smalley,” Bill Caffey, an executive vice president of the company, testified in a 1999 deposition during Smalley’s lawsuit.

Caffey oversaw pipeline safety at the company. He testified that he thought the pipeline was safe before the explosion. Koch Pipeline Co., the unit that managed the Texas pipeline, knew the line had corroded and didn’t fix it, an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded in November 1998.

The 570-mile-long pipeline carrying liquid butane from Medford, Oklahoma, to Mont Belvieu, Texas had corroded so badly that one expert, Edward Ziegler, likened it to Swiss cheese. The company didn’t give 40 of the 45 families near the explosion site -- including the Smalley and Stone families -- any information about what to do in case of an emergency, the NTSB wrote.

Danny Smalley hired Ziegler, a third-generation oilman and certified safety professional, as an expert witness. Ziegler had previously been retained by Koch Industries as an expert witness in an unrelated case. Ziegler told the jury that he’d never seen a company disregard safety to this extent in his more than 25- year career.

‘A Total Failure’

“This is an example of a total failure of a company to follow the regulations, keep their pipeline safe and operate it as the regulations require,” Ziegler, who now operates his own pipelines, testified.

A memo forwarded by Caffey to another Koch executive vice president justified putting a 70-mile section of the pipeline back into operation after being closed for three years because it could earn more than $7 million in operating income a year.

“We were to work on reducing wasteful spending,” Caffey said in his deposition.

In his 2007 book, Charles Koch didn’t comment on the pipeline explosion. He did, however, offer this observation: “Our organization does not reward failure.”

Koch Industries didn’t penalize Caffey, the executive in charge of pipeline safety. The company doubled his annual bonus to $900,000 for 1996, the year the fatal blast occurred, according to court records. In his deposition, lawyers asked Caffey whether the disaster came up during his annual review.

‘I Don’t Believe’

“I don’t believe we discussed that specifically in my review,” he said.

Caffey, who stayed with Koch for a decade after the explosion and now runs the BB River Ranch in Comanche, Texas, says the explosion was a one-of-a-kind tragedy.

“I have never known any company executive more focused on compliance than Charles Koch,” he says.

The state jury awarded Danny Smalley $296 million in its Oct. 21, 1999, verdict. The jury found that Koch Industries acted with malice because it had been aware of the extreme risks of using the faulty pipeline.

Smalley later settled for an undisclosed amount. Stone’s family also settled. Danny Smalley used settlement money to start the Danielle Dawn Smalley Foundation for pipeline safety education. Large pipeline operators such as ExxonMobil Corp., BP Plc and Kinder Morgan Inc. -- and not Koch -- accept free services from the foundation, Smalley says.

‘Never Forget’

“You see two children burned to death in front of you, you never forget that,” he says. “I want to stop other parents from ever having to see that.”

Cohlmia says Koch Industries used the lessons learned from the explosion to help avoid similar accidents. The company immediately accepted responsibility for the explosion, which was the only one of its kind, she says.

Three months after the Smalley verdict, Koch settled the five-year-old EPA case for pipeline leaks, along with a second EPA case brought in 1997. The company paid $35 million to resolve those cases, which covered more than 300 oil spills in six states.

For six decades around the world, Koch Industries has blazed a path to riches -- in part, by making illicit payments to win contracts, trading with a terrorist state, fixing prices, neglecting safety and ignoring environmental regulations. At the same time, Charles and David Koch have promoted a form of government that interferes less with company actions.

‘Overall Concept’

“My overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of the private economy and maximize personal freedoms,” David Koch told the National Journal in May 1992.

In his 2007 book, Charles Koch says his company had difficulty keeping up with changing government regulations and that it did eventually build an effective compliance program for 20 areas ranging from environmental to antitrust to safety regulations.

“We were caught unprepared by the rapid increase in regulation,” he wrote. “While business was becoming increasingly regulated, we kept thinking and acting as if we lived in a pure market economy.”

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Neumann at jneumann2@bloomberg.net.

BIGGER PROPERTY TAX INCREASES IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

A phone call yesterday from another Eddington property owner revealed their property tax increase was $500.00 - with the same valuation of their property at last year. This is wrong. It is time to write and email our state Representative Dave Johnson, state Senator Richard Rosen, and Governor Paul LePage. Either the state of Maine wants meaningful (and hopefully quality) education or it doesn't. If it does, then the State needs to pick up its portion of the tab.

GOOD NEWS - BAD NEWS IN EDDINGTON

First the BAD NEWS: Local Property Tax bills went out this past week.

No one I have spoken with saw anything except an increase - about $200.00 over last year for those with Shoreline property in Eddington. The Town Office states the Mill Rate this year went from 11.3 to 11.9.

This writer has experienced an increase in excess of $700.00 in 4.5 years. Outrageous! And yet, the principle culprit is not local municipal government; it is Maine state government, which has consistently failed to pay its fair share of local school district expenses.

Even though District 63 did everything possible to meet the State's mandate for school consolidation, it was not successful - primarily because of Brewer's School Board and the previous Commissioner of Education. As a result, District 63 not only received less than the state-wide voter mandate of 55% of the State's EPS-defined programs, but also had tax penalties in excess of $185,000 deducted from what the state did provide.

Adding insult to injury, the State of Maine chooses to dictate the assessed value of homes even while homes that have been for sale for more than a year don't sell.

The only good news from this mess is that the state Legislature voted to terminate the "tax penalties" AFTER the current tax year. (Who knows what new excuse the Legislature will use for not funding public education in Maine from this point forward.)

While many in this Senior-Citizen state are trying to survive on fixed incomes with reduced values (no increase in Social Security income for two years) when heating oil, electricity, food, gasoline, etc. are costing more and more, the State of Maine is choosing to (1) force these citizens to move out of state for the minimum 6 months plus 1 day which will cost the state of Maine these citizens' state income tax revenues, or (2) force these property owners to lose their homes, or (3) force these property owners to forgo home repairs, or (4) result in even more cost-cutting in school district facility maintenance, programs or teaching positions. No matter how one cuts it - Maine will lose.

Now the GOOD News: Eddington Planning Board approves expansion of two Eddington businesses.

At last Thursday's meeting of the Eddington Planning Board, approval was granted to:

1. Robert (Robbie) Maquillan - doing business as AutoWorks to relocate from its current location at 1306 Main Road to 1328 Main Road (the former eyesore vacant lot next to New Hope Hospice)- and

2. Expanding the parking lot and constructing an office building at Tradewinds, Claustin Lawrence, 1439 Main Road (@ the intersection of Highway 46).

Both of these businesses have provided exceptional services and products for area residents and people passing along Route 9 (aka Main Road) and Highway 46. The staff are always courteous, helpful and willing to assist stranded travelers. Expanded services will only improve their businesses, but the expanded capabilities will add to the local tax base. That's good news for us all.

As a regular customer of both establishments, this writer heartily supports the actions of the Planning Board.

THE STATE OF TEXAS THESE DAYS

From an email this morning from a fellow writer living in Texas.

"We had 72 days of 100+ heat this year and while we had a big thunder/lightning/rain storm two nights ago, the drought continues in Texas. Locally grown crops like fruit and vegetables have been destroyed and produce shipped in from other places is better looking and cheaper. Our idiot governor is running for President and so is spending even less time here taking care of business. Texas lost three and a half million acres of land to wild fires this year, half the national total. There is a huge budget deficit but the politicians won't touch the rainy day fund; instead, they cut four billion dollars from the education system. Some parents will have to pay as much as $1,000 a school year for bus service for their kids but the oil companies can keep their huge tax credits and deductions. Of course. How else would they be able to afford to buy the state politicians? I guess I'm just not constitutionally suited to be a cowgirl."

"MUST SEE" MOVIE - THE HELP

Went to see the new release, "The Help", yesterday afternoon at the Bangor Mall Cineplex. FANTASTIC movie - for adults interested in story and characters more than 'special effects.'

With the exception of the final Harry Potter movie during the first week of release, I have never seen a theater so full at a mid-afternoon Matinee as it was for "The Help" yesterday (the 3:20p.m. showing). Nor have I seen so many people over the age of 30 at one showing. (Maybe it shows that we adults WILL go to a movie theater if it is intelligent, mature and well-written.) For certain, this is well written and well acted with a real story to tell. Maybe that explains why, at the conclusion, the audience CLAPPED - close to one full minute! When was the time at any recent movie that happened? Maybe that says as much for the movie-goers as it does for the movie. Time was when audiences regularly clapped at the end of a good movie. Not so much any more. Maybe that says something, too.

Anyone over the age of 50 will remember many of the historical events referenced during the course of the movie. It was a time... not to be forgotten. For those too young to know, just one more reason to see this movie.

BANGOR HYDRO ELECTRIC RATE INCREASES - PART III OF SERIES RE: CASE NO. 2010-377

Parts 1 and 2 can be read by scrolling down. Part 1 was posted July 18, 2011.
*****

As stated earlier, this writer received the notification of requested residential rate hikes from Bangor Hydro Electric Company (BHE) on December 30, 2010, and wrote a Letter of Objection on January 1, 2011. That letter was received by the Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) on January 4, 2011. From that point on I became an Intervenor in the case.

For those who would like to read the actual letter, go to www.maine.gov/mpuc/ and click on Virtual Case File located on the right side of the page. It is a shaded area. You will be presented with a sheet filled with blank sections. Use only the section, “Case ID” and type in 2010377. Then click at the bottom of the page to proceed.

You will find the MPUC has posted 20 pages containing several listed documents per page relating to this case, with page 1 being the most recent filings. At the bottom of the page you can request any page. Each page contains approximately 10 documents listed by date filed. Page 19 contains my original letter – with attachments. One of the attachments is the Actual Notification sent out to BHE’s residential ratepayers.

It is important to note that the notification states as follows:

“If you wish to present your views on this proposed increase, you may participate in one of two ways:

“1. You may petition to intervene. If your petition is granted, you will be a party with the right to participate formally in the hearings and in negotiations. Your petition must be made in writing and must state the name and docket number of this proceeding (it became 2010-377), and the manner in which you are affected by the proceeding. Your petition must also include a short statement of the nature and extent of the participation you seek, and a statement of the nature of the evidence or argument you intend to submit. Your petition must be received by the Administrative Director, Maine Public Utilities Commission, 18 State House Station, Augusta, Maine 04333-0018 by the deadline set by the Commission for Intervention. (NOTE this last sentence. Nowhere in this notification is that date stated. Nowhere.) You must also send a copy of your petition to Bangor Hydro Electric company, attn: Bradford A. Borman, P.O. Box 932, Bangor, Maine 04402-0932.

“2. Alternatively, you may request interested person (or nonparty) status by filing a request with the Administrative Director at the above address. If your name is added to the mailing list as an interested person, you will receive notice of the time and place of any hearings, including public witness hearings, held in this case.

“You may request that the Commission hold a public hearing in this matter. If you wish to request that the Commission hold such a hearing, you must file a written request to that effect with the Administrative Director at the above address by the deadline the Commission sets. (NOTE: No deadline was set or referenced in this notification.) Persons who request a hearing will automatically be added to this mailing list as interested persons.

“You may appear as a public witness at a hearing, if one is held, and give your views on the proposed change in rates. The purpose of a public witness hearing is to give members of the public an opportunity to give their views on the matters under consideration by the Commission in this case. (NOTE: Public Hearings usually allow any member of the pubic in attendance to speak. According to this notification, the only people who would be allowed to speak [witness] would be those who have written the prescribed letters by the undefined deadline. Does this feel fixed to any readers?) Any subsequent notice of hearing and/or opportunity to intervene may be given by publication in newspapers and may thereafter be given in mail only to those customers who have petitioned for intervention, requested inclusion as an interested person (or nonparty), or requested a hearing….”

This writer’s letter of petition took issue with the following regarding the notification sent to those who would be most directly affected by the requested rate increase:

(1) the lack of BHE’s identification on the address face of the mailer,
(2) the lack of a mailing date on either the address face or the notification itself,
(3) the bulk mail stamp used which states Cedar Rapids, IA and not Maine,
(4) the appearance of the mailing being ‘junk mail’,
(5) the timing of the mailing so as to coincide with end-of-the-year mailing soliciting seniors to purchase various vendors’ Part C and Part D Medicare coverage – and – charitable donations that would qualify as income tax deductions.

This writer stated that any or all of items 1-5 would incline many recipients to throw out the notification as ‘junk mail’ and therefore never know either BHE’s intentions or the recipients’ rights to petition in opposition.

Additionally, as time passed and this writer realized that the MPUC was limiting participation of individuals who did send in letters of protest, I challenged why none of the deadlines the MPUC was referencing was included in the notification. This issue was addressed directly in a phone call to my residence by BHE’s represented attorney, Nora Healy, who told me that BHE needed to meet a deadline for filing (presumably the beginning of December 2010) and at that time the MPUC had failed to determine what the deadline(s) would be. So BHE went ahead and issued the notification without the deadlines. The MPUC never addressed my question re: this issue.

The result of the actions by BHE and the MPUC placed a burden on ratepayers who potentially could/would have filed a petition but (a) never received or opened the notification, or (b) wrote letters only to find them discounted because they missed the never defined MPUC deadline.

My January 1, 2011 letter officially requested, that “Public Hearings be held throughout the effected areas, not just in Augusta, over this issue". I also requested to be listed as an individual who would like to be heard.

In days to come I will describe how these issues raised were addressed.

BANGOR HYDRO ELECTRIC RATE INCREASES - PART II OF SERIES RE: CASE NO. 2010-377

Today's posting is Part II of the Series begun here on July 18, 2011. You can scroll down to review that post if you haven't read it.

The following are direct quotes from the final Order issued by the Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) commissioners on June 10, 2011. This order will be in effect until the next request for residential ratepayer increases, expected to be initiated December 2013.

Following today's referenced section, issues are presented which should raise questions in the reader's mind re: transparency of both BHE and the MPUC. Those issues are related to italicized information for the purpose of focusing the reader's attention.

"PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
"
On December 8, 2010, Bangor Hydro Electric Company (BHE, Bangor, Bangor Hydro, or the Company) submitted its Petition for a Commission investigation into its stranded cost revenue requirements and rates for the three year period commencing March 1, 2011 and associated materials (December 8 Petition). As part of its initial petition, Bangor included the pre-filed Direct Testimony and Exhibits or Peter Dawes and Lisa Henaghen (Dawes/Henaghen Direct Testimony), the pre-filed direct testimony of Gradon Haehnel and Timothy Olesniewisz (Haehnel/Olesniewisz Direct Testimony) (collectively, pre-filed Direct Testimony). In its pre-filed Direct Testimony, the Company requested that the Commission authorize an increase to its stranded cost rates and approve a three-year levelized revenue requirement of $19.751 million per year for the period of March 1, 2011 through February 28, 2024. In its initial filing, the Company asserted that its proposal represented an increase of approximately $5.025 million or a 34.12% increase to its current stranded cost revenue requirements. This increase to the stranded cost component of rates represented an increase in BHE's delivery rate (transmission, distribution, and stranded costs) of 4.6%.

"The Company's December 8 Petition proposed an overall pre-tax weighted average cost of capital (WACC) of 10.37% that was based on a 8.5% return on equity (ROE) for all non-Maine Yankee related stranded cost rate base. The Company asserted that his WACC was reasonable because it was the same ROE that had been approved by the Commission in Docket No. 2066-661 and was similar, albeit somewhat more modest, than the ROE and WACC approved for Maine Public Service (MPS).

"On December 13, 2010, the Maine Office of Public Advocate submitted a petition to intervene. On December 20, 2010, Central Maine Power Company (CMP) submitted a petition for discretionary intervention. At the initial case conference on December 21, 2010, the Hearing Examiner granted these petitions, to which no objections were made. Following the case conference, the Hearing Examiner extended the deadline for interventions until December 27, 2010 (from December 13, 2010). On January 11, 2011, the Hearing Examiner granted the late filled petitions to intervene by Mr. Helen Patterson and Ms. Rusty Gagnon."

WHAT DOES THE PRECEDING INFORMATION MEAN? HOW DOES IT RELATE TO BHE RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS?

Readers will need to refer back to those italicized sections to track the following issues.

1. According to Maine law (Title 35-A and Chapters 110 and 120 of the MPUC's rules) BHE has/had the responsibility to send notices of proposed rate increases to all ratepayers. The notification which BHE mailed stated that BHE had filed its Petition with the MPUC on December 7, 2010. (not December 8, 2010)

2. The Maine Office of Public Advocate (OPA) filed their petition on December 13, 2010. This shows that the OPA received a copy/notice of BHE's December 2010 petition filing prior to December 13, 2010.

3. The Central Maine Power Company (CMP) also filed a petition to participate in this case. Their petition was filed with the MPUC on December 20, 2010. This shows that CMP had received notification of BHE's December 2010 filing prior to December 20, 2010.

4. The first case conference was conducted December 21, 2010. This shows that the Hearing Examiner was willing to begin the Commission's (requested) investigation into the issue of the requested rate increase at that time.

HOWEVER, it is obvious that either (1) there was no concern by the MPUC of when/if the ratepayer class had, in fact, received the required notification and, therefore, should be included in the proceedings from the very beginning - or - (2) there was an assumption that no one from the ratepayer class would petition to be included (in essence Object to any aspect or issue regarding the requested rate increase) - or - (3) any ratepayer who might petition could be ignored by the MPUC Hearing Examiner.

This position by the MPUC - and any such assumptions - proved to be wrong when Ms. Patterson and I filed our individual petitions in accordance with the minimal information provided in the BHE notification...which we did not receive until AFTER the initial case conference was held.

This writer did not even receive the BHE notification until December 30, 2010 - 9 days after the initial case conference, 10 days after CMP filed their petition, and 17 days after the OPA filed their petition. (Additionally, this writer knows of individuals residing in Bangor who did not receive their BHE notification until the middle of January, 2011!)

Question: Are policies, laws and/or rules pertaining to the public/ratepayer rights and protections intended to be "real" or are they just figment regulations for corporations - not worth the paper they're printed on?

Tomorrow: The issue raised by this writer/ratepayer and petitioned to the MPUC.

IS SOCIAL SECURITY AN "ENTITLEMENT"?
From today's email mailbag -

"Entitlement???" What the hell is wrong here?

Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too. It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only 30K over your working life, that’s close to $220,500. If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer’s contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working (me) you'd have $892,919.98.If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years, and that’s with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month. The folks in Washington have pulled off a bigger Ponzi scheme than Bernie Madoff ever had.

Entitlement my ass, I paid cash for my social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!! Congressional benefits, aka. free health care, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days, now that's welfare. And they have the nerve to call my retirement entitlements !!!!!!.....scroll down..............

Emergency Rooms for their general health care at just one hospital the taxpayer cost totaled over $25 million a year!!!

Someone please tell me what the HELL's wrong with all the people that run this country!!!!!!

We're "broke" & can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, the Homeless, families who've lost their homes because of Wall Street banks who pulled a fast one or who've lost their jobs because of corporate "outsourcing", etc., etc.,???????????

In the last months we have provided aid to Haiti, Chile, and Turkey. And now Pakistan - the home of bin Laden and inept border security. Literally, BILLIONS of DOLLARS!!!

Our retired seniors living on a 'fixed income'receive no aid nor do they get any breaks while our government and religious organizations pour Hundreds of Billions of $$$$$$'S and Tons of Food into Foreign Countries!

They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement, even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives and now when its time for us to collect, the government is running out of money. Why did the government borrow from it in the first place? For "bridges to nowhere" and pet projects at home to buy votes?

We have hundreds of adoptable children who are shoved aside to make room for the adoption of foreign orphans.

AMERICA: a country where we have homeless citizens without shelter, children going to bed hungry, elderly going without 'needed' meds, and mentally ill without treatment -etc., etc.

YET......................

They have a 'Benefit' for the people of Haiti on 12 TV stations, ships and
planes lining up with food, water, tents, clothes, bedding, doctors and medical
supplies.

Imagine if the *GOVERNMENT* gave 'US' the same support they give to other countries.

SAD? YEAH. OK, SO WHEN DO WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?????

A suggestion: Make a copy of this. Print it out. And mail it to your U.S. Senators and Congressmen & women. Write a personal note at the bottom and tell them to do the job WE sent them to do and are paying them to do. Watch who responds. Who gets the job done. Those who don't? Vote them out ASAP

MAINE GOVERNMENT LESSON LEARNED - or How Patience can SOMETIMES change small power grabs by corporations

The following is Part 1 of a series of postings which will take you, the reader, through the process of a case filed before the Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) as personally experienced by this writer over the past seven months. I will state it is the first, but probably not the last, such experience I have had with such an entity of Maine state government. Consider this my offering in the challenges and opportunities of a United States citizen and Maine resident and taxpayer.

***

For those of you who have been following the travails of this case and writer since Saturday, January 1, 2011, when I first raised a hand in protest to the machinations of Bangor Hydro Electric Company (BHE), and through the 10 subsequent posting, I can now tell you - in synopsized form - of how that case evolved and has been concluded. At least for the time being. Since BHE files for residential rate increases at least every three years based on their claims of Stranded Costs, for which that company believes we, the residential ratepayer should be fiscally responsible, we can expect to go through it again beginning in December 2013.

NOTE: If you are interested in reading the previous postings, you can click on "Older Posts" and screen down to the following dates: Sunday, 5/22; Monday, 4/4; Thursday, 3/17; Sunday, 3/13; Thursday, 3/10; Wednesday, 3/9; Monday, 3/7; Sunday, 2/13; Monday, 1/24; Thursday, 1/13; Wednesday, 1/12 and the initial posting Saturday, 1/1 when it all began (for me).

A Bit of Background
The Commissioners of the MPUC are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Maine Legislature for, I believe, three-year terms. The latest appointment was Mr. Welch, Chairman. He is reported to have been a Commissioner (under a different governor) at the time BHE was directed by the Maine Legislature to sell off its electricity-generating resources. For that sale, BHE is reported to have received $750,000,000. BHE is currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of EMERA, a Canadian Corporation. BHE is now a transmission and distribution (only) utility.

The MPUC, with offices in Hollowell, ME, employs a staff of individuals who serve in a variety of capacities. When a case first begins, the parties to the individual case (BHE v. others) work through the direction and management of a Hearing Examiner and his/her staff. Months will pass while the parties do (or don't) communicate their positions and negotiations through this Hearing Examiner before the case will ever be reviewed, heard and ruled on by the three Commissioners. Patience and tenacity are essential for anyone who really wants to see an acceptable resolution to even the smallest issue. A long-life is required if one wants to see bigger issues addressed.

Stranded Costs are defined as debts - both long-term and, apparently, the the mind of BHE management, those incurred related to management decisions. It is a big and broad umbrella in the mind of BHE management.

Over-riding ratepayer issues regarding BHE's requests for residential rate increases for Stranded Costs are (1) when these debts occurred (since the debts should have been a result of the re-organization of BHE following the sale of its electricity-generating resources and subsequently becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of EMERA), (2)why the proceeds of the sale (the $750,000,000.) were not required to be used/were not used to pay off any remaining debts - or conversely, why EMERA was not required to assume them, and (3) just how long Maine residential ratepayers (that is what we are called - ratepayers) are expected to be increasingly charged to pay off these debts.

This writer became involved only because of a much smaller - but, to me, significant - issue: The transparency of BHE's intent to comply with Maine law requiring notification to its ratepayers that it was filing with the MPUC for a rate increase that would only be applied to residential ratepayers. Leave even the smallest crack in a wall and a cockroach will find a way to crawl through.

You see, BHE "requested that the Commission authorize an increase to its stranded cost rates and approve a three-year levelized revenue requirement of $19.751 million per year for the period of March 1, 2011 through February 28, 2014. (As stated in the MPUC final ORDER, dated June 10, 2011)

Their legally required written notification to the ratepayers of this request did not even have BHE's name on the outside of the bulk-mailed, tri-folded, single sheet which contained only the recipient's name and mailing address.

I say "sometime" because no where on the document (on the address side or the page-long statement of intent inside) was there a mailing date.This document was mailed sometime in December - I received mine December 30, 2010.

Who knows where it was mailed. The bulk-mail stamp was issued out of Cedar Rapids, IA.

And THAT was my issue. I believed the notification had the appearance of end-of-the-year Junk Mail. Junk mail that is automatically through in the trash unopened.

Based on the content of their application, one might wonder if there was an INTENT to have as few ratepayers become aware of their request as possible. Apparently very few ratepayers were aware - or, if aware, thought they could do anything to stop or appeal such an increase.

Neither of those statements applied to yours truly. I raised my hand and wrote a letter with copies of both sides of the notification. By the time this series is finished, it is my hope that vast numbers of BHE ratepayers will do the same come December 2013, because corporate greed and underhanded ways to undercut ratepayers, voters, citizens - people - needs to be stood up against. We, the American people, need to become our own corporation.

A MOVIE WORTH WATCHING - AND THINK ABOUT WASHINGTON D.C. POLITICANS

First of all, apologies are due for the absence of articles and commentary for the past few months. This writer has been inundated with writing deadlines (I am in a writers group that meets weekly, and have been working on two different manuscripts - more or less fiction crime stories for a big writers conference this coming November in the Boston area).

Additionally, a lot of time was required to stay current and participate in a case that came before the Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) in January (just finished) about which I will be writing in coming weeks. The case involved Bangor Hydro Electric Company’s every-three-year request for an increase in rates. Residential customers of BHE should be interested and possibly upset. I’ll leave that to you to decide.

However, today I want to bring something else to the table. I know of very few people who are not aware of the debacle that’s been going on for months in Washington D.C. over the issue of raising the debt ceiling, the requirement by many that any additional borrowing must be partnered with a decrease in federal government spending, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Everyone seems to have a “position.” Few seem to have the country’s welfare, particularly the members of the hard-working (or not working) middle class and poor. So that is the issue, in an indirect way, of today’s offering.

The other day while in Bangor, I needed to pick up something at the Bed, Bath and Beyond store at the Bangor Mall. While there I spotted a rack of never-used movie DVDs – at $5.00 each. Thinking there might be something worth watching (maybe during the endless commercial breaks on nearly ever channel, including cable), I was pleased to find two I had never seen but had wanted to when they first came out in theaters. “Frost/Nixon” – a Ron Howard movie, and “Swing Vote” starring Kevin Costner.

Last night, with nothing of interest on the TV, I decided to watch “Swing Vote.” I encourage everyone, regardless of political persuasion to watch that movie. Pick it up as a rental or check out the bargains at Bed, Bath and Beyond. There were several copies.

“Swing Vote” is as relevant to what is going on in Washington D.C. now as it was when the movie came out – maybe more so.

The premise is this: The final election for President of the United States has taken place. There is an absolute tie at the electoral college based on votes from every state except New Mexico. And all of the votes from Mexico have been counted – EXCEPT ONE (Kevin Costner’s). And that one vote will determine which of the two candidates the delegate/s from New Mexico will vote – in essence Kevin's character, named Bud, has THE tie-breaking vote for THE President of the United States.

Of course someone in the media has to figure out WHO is going to cast THE crucial vote and the world media descends on his poor ramshackle trailer. Bud is basically a looser. He drinks, can’t get up in the morning, has just been terminated from his job, hasn’t fixed the hot water heater so he doesn’t smell very good (can’t take a shower without hot water), and pays absolutely no attention to the state of world, (much less the local news.

BUT, Bud has this amazing daughter who is a student in probably the 6th grade (or thereabouts). And she believes in one’s Civic Responsibility – that voting is a Social Contract between the citizens of this country and their country. (Gee, does that sound like anyone you know from this blog?) And therein lies the first of Bud’s many challenges in this movie.

Now I won’t tell you anymore about the story OTHER THAN TO SAY there is one question Bud asks at the end of the movie (I won’t tell you to whom he directs the question) and it is as relevant today as it was during the movie’s timeframe.

I challenge any reader to answer that question – and ask why the people elected to represent us, the people of this country, can’t seem to get it. And get their job done.

It’s just a thought. We all know what that’s worth.

THE SQUEAKY WHEEL, THE IRRITATING PEBBLE - OR What I learned from Challenging Bangor Hydro at the Maine Public Utility Commission

It requires Patience, Persistence and a big chunk of a “P.O-ed” attitude to challenge Bangor Hydro Electric Company (BHE). The same can be said when dealing with the Maine Public Utilities Company (MPUC).

This past Friday, May 20th, Case # 2010-377 was decided by the MPUC Board of Commissioners. Finally I was going to see and be in the presence of “the players” – or so I thought. The MPUC announcement, stating the meeting would begin at 9am at the Commission’s office in Hallowell, advised the parties need not attend and no testimony would be heard. Still, I expected the major players, who have argued and written endlessly for five and one-half months, would want to be there to hear the positions and decisions of the three Commissioners. I was wrong.

Newly-appointed Chairman Thomas Welsh attended via telephone; his coughing at the end of his statements verified the state of his immediate health. However, Commissioners David Littel and Vendean Vafiades were seated at the massive conference table, as were three members of what appeared to be MPUC staff. Two men sat in the area designated for observers. Two other women, who appeared to have official responsibilities, were seated at either the conference table or a table to the side. There was no indication of attendance by BHE, the Hearing Examiner, the Office of Public Advocate (OPA), or others who have participated lo these many months.

Because of weather and my tradition of getting lost the first time traveling to a new location, I didn’t arrive until 9:20am – just in time to hear Commissioner Vafiades reference Intervenor Gagnon (!). Glad I got there when I did. Since Commissioner Littel had already issued his primary positions, I have no idea if he, too, might have mentioned my initial letter (petition), Brief or Response to the Hearing Examiner’s Report. However, I was certainly gratified to hear Commissioner Vafiades affirm the position I have taken all along regarding the junk mail appearance of BHE’s mailed “notification.”

It was also rewarding to hear Chairman Welsh state his concern that some of the debts BHE is identifying as Stranded Costs (which BHE believes ratepayers should pay off through increasing rates) may not legally qualify as Stranded Costs. His position was that some debts may have occurred because of the restructuring BHE went through following its sale to Emera Corporation. He did not appear to feel subsequent debts following the sale qualified as Stranded Costs, a position Intervener Helen Patterson has been arguing during this case and others involving BHE and Central Maine Power, which also went through restructuring after selling out to Iberdrola USA. Therefore it was rewarding to hear Chairman Welsh indicate he wants the MPUC to explore and review that issue at a future unspecified time.

A major issue all along has been BHE’s position that “the remaining life of Bangor Hydro’s stranded costs is ...at least twenty (years)” and that a “conservative” rate of 8.5% should be attached to BHE’s Return of Equity (ROE) based on BHE’s calculations and methodology. The MPUC’s Hearing Examiner (and staff) had developed calculations and methodology which supported only a 7.04% ROE.

Each Commissioner weighed in with Littel leaning toward a 7.5% rate. Both Vafiades and Welsh leaned toward a 7.35% ROE and 7.35% was the final decision. During a conversation with Commissioner Vafiades following the meeting I learned the 7.35% rate will be applicable to the next three years (meaning ratepayers should not be faced with an increasing rate each of the three years of this “contract.”). Because of this rate being fixed for three years, the Stranded Cost recovery period will probably be extended to nine years instead of the six to seven projected in the Examiner’s Report. Overall, nine years is better than twenty and 7.35% is better than 8.5%.

It was also rewarding to hear Commissioner Vafiades tell me that she had read all of my submissions as well as the attachments.

There were many lessons this ratepayer/taxpayer/voter learned over this past five-month journey.

1. One individual can (and should) speak up when events that seem so automatic are wrong on their face. The notification form mailed by BHE, or their designee, back in December – or whenever, who knows when there is no mailing date stamped on the address portion on written on the enclosed message, carried no identification of the sender. From all appearances it was junk mail. If the intent was (should be) to provide proper advance notification to ratepayers and allow (encourage) individuals to petition in support or opposition, recipients need to recognize the mailing as something to open and read.

2. Petitioning the MPUC must follow strict protocol – written letters must be mailed or faxed to the MPUC Administrative Director with copies to the utility (in this case, BHE). Moreover, these "petitions" must be submitted by a specified date, even if the BHE notification doesn’t provide the date in its notification. Therefore, individuals must act swiftly upon receiving any notification.

3. The petitions must challenge specific actions with specific reason(s). In my petition it was (primarily) the lack of BHE identification as the sender and (the consequent) appearance of junk mail. Other specifics that could be used are: Maine is the 9th poorest state in the nation with electricity costs the 12th highest, the negative impact on a significant portion of ratepayers living on fixed incomes and the consequential impact of higher heating costs, etc. Just stating BHE rates are already too high or “I can’t afford BHE’s charges as it is,” won’t gain the ratepayer admission to the “Intervener Classification” which is the objective. Unless one obtains the status of a bona fide (admitted) Intervener one is fluff in the wind.

4. While the Maine OPA is charged with the responsibility of arguing on behalf of the public, the ratepayers, it doesn’t. You have to take on the responsibility and the work to argue for yourself, your issue(s), and your involvement. That means writing and faxing whatever documents you want to become a part of the case record. Emails don’t become a part of the record and disappear into the nether world, even though a lot of communication goes on via emails. No one will tell you this outright, but it is.

5. The case process goes on and on and there will be times when you want to chuck the whole thing. There will be times when you will feel even the MPUC staff want you to go away. They can be very dismissive and disregarding. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. Individuals acting alone simply do not carry the weight of a massive corporation, especially when that corporation is armed with lots of attorneys and has paid staff to do the letter or document research and writing.
HOWEVER, none of those people is going to come forward and pay your bills, advocate for what you believe is right – or against what you believe is wrong.

It isn’t easy, however if you don’t speak up big corporations and government will do all the speaking and they will not be speaking for your interests. The battleground for your freedom to stand up and speak may have been won on foreign lands but you have to fight here at home to hold on to it.

One way to find fellow Interveners, once you have filed your petition – with your email address included, is to read all of the names of the people who will be receiving email communications from the MPUC. That is how Intervener Patterson and I connected and the result was more effective for each of us.

The PUBLIC must take the initiative, must speak up, must take an active role in controlling runaway energy costs here in Maine. Case 2010-377 provided this writer with the opportunity of being a student in MPUC 101. It will not be the last class in which I will enroll. Here is hoping I see a larger enrollment the next time.

LOONS AND LOONEY

They're back. I heard the first loon singing last Wednesday at 12:49am (woke me up. I must have been listening for that haunting sound even in my sleep.). Then Wednesday I saw a solitary loon swimming in front of the house mid-afternoon. Saturday brought a pair. The singing continues every night, really prolific around 11:30pm. So, for all the rain and chilly mornings, there is visual proof - Spring is here and Winter is gone. Now, if that last snow mound in the shade would just take the hint.

***

Each Christmas I buy a day-by-day calendar for my kitchen counter. Usually the contents are humorous, sometimes interesting facts. This year's calendar is named, "Wild Words from Wild Women." Last Friday (April 15) the provided quote was from Peg Bracken, household humorist. With today being this year's tax-filing date, I think the quote still is usable. Ms. Bracken's comment:

"Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?"

So true, so true. (No answer was provided, BTW.)

SPRING IS TRULY HERE

Sometime between 9AM and 3PM today, the ice went out. True, there is a bit of thin "something" in the middle, but it will be gone tomorrow - for sure by the weekend. But from shore to the middle, waaaay out there - it is open water. Come on Loons!!!

BETTER NEWS - FOR A CHANGE

Open water on Davis Pond and at Rooks Road Landing is in full progress.

Open water can be seen along the shoreline from the shore to maybe fifty feet out. Fissures in the remaining ice can be seen clearly, along with spots in the ice caused by "hot springs." Could be we'll see the ice go out within a week or so.

Next highlight will be the return of the loons! Yippee.

GEOTHERMAL GREENHOUSE TOUR TO BE CONDUCTED IN EDDINGTON

From today's email inbox:

Geothermal Greenhouse Tour
April 13, 2011 ·∙ 10:00-11:30 AM
Hutchings Greenhouse, 445 Riverside Drive, Eddington

Come and see an open-loop geothermal system.

Hutchings Greenhouse hasn't burned any oil for two years!
This system was installed by Dan Herweg of Airotherm, who will be present to answer technical questions.

For more information contact Claudia Lowd: claudia@mainerural.org

Telephone: 949-5106

This workshop is organized by: Farm Energy Partners (Maine Rural Partners)

Workshop funding from: RMA

WHY VERRILL DANA LAW FIRM REPRESENTS BANGOR HYDRO

The following information is presented on the web page of the law firm that represents Bangor Hydro before the Maine PUC. When the peoples "law firm", the Office of the Public Advocate, says nothing during negotiations and "discussions" to challenge increasing rates and the utilities' justification for same, it is no wonder Maine has such high utility rates and businesses give a Thumb Down to doing business here.

***

"William S. Harwood serves as Co-Chair of the firm's Energy Practice Group. He has devoted most of his 30 year career to representing public utilities before state and federal regulatory agencies. He has represented electric, gas, water and telecommunications companies in more than 50 major cases before the Maine Public Utilities Commission and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, including rate cases, prudence investigations, management audits, merger approvals, requests for certificates of public convenience and necessity and rulemaking proceedings. Bill counsels utilities on proactive strategies to both anticipate regulatory developments and efficiently manage the regulatory process.

Bill has been extensively involved in traditional rate setting issues, including CWIP in rate base, attrition, accounting orders and cost of capital. Bill has negotiated long-term alternative rate plans which include automatic inflation adjustments, service quality penalties, and recovery of mandated or exogenous costs. He has also negotiated numerous long-term special rate agreements between utilities and specific industrial consumers.

Bill was actively involved in the restructuring of the Maine electric utility industry, including representing utilities in the sale of their generating assets, recovery of stranded costs and providing standard offer (default) service. More recently Bill has represented developers of new transmission lines in securing Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity and wind developers in negotiating Interconnection Agreements and securing adequate transmission capacity for delivery of the output. Bill has served as Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Maine School of Law, teaching utilitiy regulation and administrative law.


PUBLICATIONS

Liability for Accidents at Construction Sites: "Do Water Districts Have Immunity," Journal of Maine Water Utilities Association, Vol. 88, 2009.
Co-Authored "Maine Regulation of Public Utilities," (2008).
Co-Authored: “Keep it Flowing: Basic Principles of Water Utility Interconnection Agreements,” Journal of the Maine Water Utilities Association, April 2005.
"Gun Control: State Versus Federal Regulation of Firearms," Maine Policy Review Vol. 11 No. 1 (2002).
"Codification of Maine Rules: An Idea Whose Time Has Come," Maine Bar Journal (March 1992).
Comment, "Liquidation Damages: A Comparison of the Common Law and the Uniform Commercial Code," 45 Ford. L. Review 1349 (1977).

REPRESENTATIVE MATTERS

Represented owner of hydro-electric facilities before FERC in defending claim by upstream owner for headwater benefits.

Represented 11 New England electric utilities in a dispute with the lead owner of a jointly owned generating unit.

Represented Canadian utility before FERC in dispute over restrictions in transmitting energy across international border.

Represented a water company in a five day jury trial in Superior Court to determine fair value of the company’s assets taken by eminent domain.

Represented the developer of a proposed 80 mile 345 kV transmission line.

Represented a Maine electric utility before Maine Supreme Judicial Court in appellate review of a PUC decision approving creation of an unregulated marketing affiliate.

Represented the developer of high pressure natural gas pipeline across Maine.

Arbitrated a dispute between two New England utilities involving rights to a jointly owned generating unit.

Represented a real estate developer before Maine Supreme Judicial Court in dispute over water utility system development charge.

Represented consortium of environmental advocacy groups before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in its efforts to force removal of a hydro-electric facility.

REPRESENTATIVE CLIENTS

Aliant
Bangor Hydro-Electric Company
Biddeford & Saco Water Company
Central Vermont Public Service Corp.
Community Service Telephone
Emera Energy Services, Inc.
Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, LLC
National Grid
New Brunswick Power Corp.
Portland Water District "

***

To add to the ongoing pain, Governor LePage's nominee to become the new PUC Chairman is Mr. Welsh, a member of the PUC in the 90s and who advocated then (and now) for Bangor Hydro's generating power sources to be sold. In today's Portland Sentinel it was reported the Legislative Committee has approved this nomination 13-0, all the while Mr. Welsh states the $750 million dollar sale was beneficial to Maine ratepayers. (Which ones, Mr. Welsh?)

Interesting to note that Emera, the Canadian corporation which bought Bangor Hydro, assumed none of the utility's past or current debt and continues to issue Bangor Hydro stock (traded on the NYSE).

While Maine residential customers continue to be screwed, we can thank people like Mr. Welsh for being one of many screw drivers.

Strange how Governor LePage can't seem to find any commissioners for the state who didn't have the same jobs back in the 1990s. Yogi Bera time - "deja vu all over again." This is "people before politics"? A one-term governor is all we need of this one.