LiberalGeek Reports From the SEU RFP Meeting

Sorry that I haven’t posted on this earlier, but my weekend was very enjoyable and made a long post difficult to write.  My schedule cleared at work on Thursday so I was able to break away for a few hours to get out to the public comment meeting for the RFP that the SEU is using for hiring a contract administrator.  Represented at the meeting were the Delaware Nature Society, the Clean Air Council and several potential bidders, including Lockheed Martin, Nexant and Clean Power Markets.

I took the issues that I had gathered from our readers and a few emails that I received outside of the public posts and used that as a list that I wanted addressed.

This is a Harris McDowell production, so I wanted to know what the public access was going to be to the goings-on of the SEU Contract Administrator (CA).  The CA will provide regular reports to the DEO, and those reports are available through FOIA.  It isn’t exactly realtime information about the SEU, but it will be available monthly, quarterly and annually.

I was also a little concerned about who had written the RFP.  It appears that it was written by ICF, a firm that does green energy work for government entities.  I’ll do a little more research on them, but at least it wasn’t Gary Stockbridge…

Jim Black from the Clean Air Council asked about apportioning target levels for the CA before the RFP goes out.  There would be no point in throwing all of the resources at “clean vehicles” if we could get a lot more bang for the buck from “electricity end-uses.”  Certainly something should be apportioned for each, but the standards should be set for them.  Lockheed also was concerned about the leeway in some of the goals and made some suggestion to tighten these up.  Later, Jim Black told Charlie Smisson and me that some of these things were discussed at a previous workshop, but they didn’t seem to make it into the draft.

The big issue that came up was around timing.  Charlie Smisson of DEO wants to get this out ASAP.  He is really anxious to get this up and running, perhaps so that it can be started by the Minner administration.  His schedule is for naming a winner in December.  This is all well and good, I can imagine that there will be some shuffling of staff when the next Governor is sworn in, but here’s the rub.  The bill that re-forms the SEU is pending the Governor’s signature and her subsequent appointment of 7 people to constitute the new board.  Until she does this, the board will be headed by one Harris McDowell and populated by the SEU board that is arguably acting extra-legally.

Even if you believe the board to be legally constituted now, as Charlie Smisson, Phil Cherry, Harris McDowell and Frank Murphy all contend, we are talking about strapping a new board with this RFP that they will have had no power to review.  I made the point to Charlie (he ran the meeting) that given all of the concern that has been expressed about the way that this thing has played out so far, it would be wise to simply wait for a few weeks for a new board to be constituted before issuing the final RFP.  Charlie saw the logic in this, but seemed unable to fully commit before consulting the SEU board (I say McDowell).

After the meeting I had an excellent conversation with Jim Black, Charlie Smisson and Phil Cherry.  I made clear to them that our stand on this is that the SEU has the same stated goals as most of the people concerned.  The problem is in the way that the process has been corrupted by McDowell.  Of course, they couldn’t agree with me, but I want them to know that we are not the enemy.  I want to encourage and subsidize sustainable energy.  But I want it done in as open a way as possible.  Let me also say that Charlie and Phil were very willing to discuss the RFP process and were quite open to all suggestions.  These guys are top-notch and I thank them for their efforts.

Here’s a teaser.  Two people people that I consider to be smart and well-connected have suggested that we (the people) form a non-profit and bid on this thing.  I think there is some merit to that idea, and the fact that it came from two different sources makes me think twice about it being a pipe dream.