Next SEU Meeting Scheduled
The SEU has put out a public notice for comments on an RFP to hire a contract administrator for the SEU. The draft RFP is available here. A meeting is scheduled for Thursday, July 3 at 10AM in Dover. Interestingly, the notice just came to my inbox at 2:30PM today.
I am not sure that I’ll be able to make it to the meeting, so let’s review the RFP and see if someone can get there to keep ’em honest.
3.3.4.2 Alternatives to RFPs
RFPs are the preferred tool for selecting ICs. However, the CA may propose, to
the DEO and the Board, alternative methods for selecting ICs. If an IC is not
successfully selected through the RFP bidding process, the CA may implement its
own program delivery process subject to approval by the DEO and the Board.
3.3.4.4 IC Contracting Procedures
Since the SEU is not a State entity, the CA will not be required to adhere to State
contracting procedures when engaging ICs. Nevertheless, contract agreements with
ICs must be consistent with prudent business practices, employ fair employment
practices and include adequate insurance coverage for all subcontractors.
3.6.1 Special Purpose Bonds
The SEU, through the CA, will raise a series of special purpose bonds, tax-exempt if
eligible, with a cumulative initial value between 2007 and 2015 capped at thirty million
real 2007 dollars ($30 million in 2007$).
WHY are we using the dollars from 2 years ago? HELLO????? aren’t we in a recession? Isn’t the dollar worth less now?
3.7 SEU Property
Any logos, trademarks, databases, copyrighted material or material eligible for copyright,
physical equipment, computer software purchased or developed with SEU monies, surveys,
survey results, program designs, and any SEU work product determined by the Board to be
necessary to the success of SEU programs will be the property of the SEU and used only
with permission of the DEO and the Board. The CA will be required to transfer such items
to the winning bidder of a future CA RFP.
4.0 is a hoot!
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the ground floor view of how a worthy public policy goal and the publicly-garnered resources to serve it are methodically mired in and buried under layer upon layer of ultimately-politician-(McDowell)-controlled bureaucracy…with a nice hefty price tag attached for whoever is set to suck the teat from the inside of the scheme.
Oh yay “Sustainable Energy Utility”!! McDowell surely did old Roger Roy proud.
No offense, but I think the SEU is a complete loaf of shit, tailor made by the same 3rd-rate crowd who in Delaware have become veritable wizards at bleeding self-serving patronage out of any and every public imperative.
It might work in a state where government is transparent, accountable, and honest…and the government actually answers to the public. But this Delaware.
I am not going to pretend it’s a victory because they lopped the ends off this shit loaf and put some lipstick on it, around the edges, to stanch the hue-and-cry about the most outrageous aspects of the original deal.
In the last analysis, McDowell got away with 90% of what he wanted. That alone is enough for me to believe we have all just been played like fiddles.
Hell, he was probably smart enough to initially build it as a power and resource grab so outrageous that he could easily live with yielding a smidge here and there to assuage the expected activist critics.
I have the feeling 5 years from now we will see nothing but 5 years of waste, fraud, abuse, and “incompetence” (of the kind that still keeps the money trough filled) that end up as a big drag on a renewables free market in Delaware, in service of steering huge monies to a freshly-minted crony/patronage network.
But hey I could be wrong. This could end up a first-of-its-kind successful state government scheme hatched by the likes of a Harris McDowell.
…….naaaaaaaah.
I have to say I agree with Tyler.
One quibble. In five years Harris McDowell’s magic money machine will be whirring quietly in the background and, like Roy’s six figure sinecure, nobody will know much about why it exists or what it does.
Oh agreed. I should have said “IF” in five years we are able to look back with the scrutiny the rest of us understand as REAL accountability.
That’s why I put “incompetence” in quotes, noting this is the type of incompetence that would shut down any other normal accountable entity, but in this type of scheme serves to mask the real competence operating underneath…the skill at making sure the trough continues being filled for those feeding from it, well below public radar.
As long as they can keep it going before it is somehow exposed and dealt with, it will forever be incompetent to the purposes they would have us believe it serves. Until then, they will run it, and eventually mutate it and morph and otherwise murkify it as long as possible…with quite amazing competence at serving their own agendas, interests, and benefit.
Is this gonna be another DE River & Bay, Solid Waste, Riverfront Development Corp blackhole w/o oversite???
These effers are effing the eff outa us : (
What’s a citizen to do?????