Happy Easter from The SEU
This morning I attended the second meeting in a month of the Sustainable Energy Utility (SEU) Oversight Board. The big news that came out of this meeting was that a final contract had been negotiated with Applied Energy to be the Contract Administrator. The CA is responsible for the actual work of the SEU. The allocate resources for promoting energy savings through a series of energy saving initiatives. The Fiscal Agent is currently going through the selection process, they manage the money.
I talked about the selection of the CA a few weeks ago. Since then, the Delaware Energy Office has been in negotiations with Applied Energy to finalize the actual contract. Last night they finally settled on the contract.
In computers there are sometimes parts of a program that we call Easter Eggs. They are small, hidden parts of code that when you do the right thing to activate them, they do something unexpected, and often fun. One example is that Microsoft Word used to have a little animated movie that showed all of the names of the Word programmers. The Easter Eggs in the CA contract are equally fun.
There is exactly one human being named in the contract. This human is a $120/hr consultant with the Transportation Management Authority by the name of Roger Roy. So, of 21 named positions, only one actually has a name next to it with 40 hours budgeted for his services. For those of you playing along at home, Mr. Roy is a former legislator who promoted the TMA in legislation, then left Leg Hall to become its only employee.
Perhaps more interesting to me was the revelation that there has been a pilot program in place for over a year to weatherize low-income homes in Wilmington. The idea is to help weatherize the homes of the participants and to pay back the costs of those improvements through “shared savings.” Essentially, if the homes save $500/year due to weatherization, $250 would go to pay for the weatherization and $250 would be realized savings by the participant. Once the costs have been paid off, the participant gets all of the savings.
Great idea, huh? Guess which Wilmington non-profit is the SEU’s partner. Peoples Settlement. Sen. McDowell was asked about this and he assured us that there was no money going to People’s Settlement. This is a good thing, since there have been accounting irregularities alleged by the State Auditor and there is a great deal of accounting wizardry that must be employed in this pilot program. I intend to dig a little deeper on this issue.
My final concern about the SEU this time is that we are just now getting to the Contract Administrator. Months ago (before the election) I asked why the RFP for the CA had to be rushed before the new Oversight Board could be seated by the Governor. The response was that they wanted to get the CA in place so that they could be ready for the beginning of the winter and start saving energy right away. Needless to say, with the first day of spring tomorrow, we have our first failure.
Awesome reporting and analysis.
One tiny but important point: Roger Roy’s outfit is the Transportation Management Association, as much as he might like us to think it is the quasi-governmental “Transportation Management Authority.”
Thanks, anon. You are correct, of course.
Any history of the Delaware Way would be incomplete w/o an entire chapter on Roger Roy. He is also an uber-lobbyist w/many clients, and often shows up to fundraisers with checks from several of his clients. His wife, Paula, was a secretary for Gov. Pete duPont, became a big lobbyist in her own right (Delaware Retail Association) after she married Roger, and parlayed all of her unsavory connections into the role of Executive Director of the Delaware Health Care Commission during, what else, the Minner Years.
Geek: Thanks for going to the meeting, giving of your time, and keeping us posted. You done good!
Gracias. The meetings are surprisingly well attended. There are regularly more of the public than board members.
There is exactly one human being named in the contract. This human is a $120/hr consultant with the Transportation Management Authority by the name of Roger Roy.
Oh Shit!!! Not to brag or anything, but I totally called this mother fucking sinecure from jump street. However, I could not fathom that McDowell and Roy would be so brazen as to put Roy in the pay-off spot.
Christ-oh-mighty these guys are low lifes.
To be fair, if Roy is looking to get rich on this position, he is dumber that we ever thought. 40 hours at $120 is hardly worth the trouble.
No, there will have to be more to really call it a sinecure. $5K ain’t all that.
So what exactly will Citizen Roy be doing… writing recommendations for who to disburse more money to? He can probably get that done in 40 hours…
LG,
What about when the Carbon agreement money comes rolling in? That is the jackpot.
Oh yes, he may get more than budgeted, but it is not a full time position. I think he official role is to assist in marketing.
We have to watch for McDowell making the jump to Applied Energy, that’s the cash.
That weatherization program is really interesting. I’d love to know how many of these they have done, what they do for “weatherization”, how they determine the savings and the mechanism for paying it back. It is interesting to me that there is nothing on their website except one line with a person to call or email. And how this pilot came about. Did this get approved by the SEU Board, or is this not an SEU program?
I think that’s all I’ll say for now. But do let me know if you need some help digging into this. And very good blogging, LG.
There are 30 homes involved in the pilot. And it is an SEU program. The actual legalities of it escape me, but it must have been authorized by the SEU Board at the time.
Here are the minutes of the meeting where it was voted on:
http://www.seu-de.org/docs/minutes/2007_SEU%20Oversight%20Board_Minutes_Dec-6.pdf
And the presentation of the program, which they voted on:
http://www.seu-de.org/docs/minutes/Early_Launch_SEU_Program_Proposal.pdf
Oil heat.
So the followup workshop should have happened this month. Know when they’ll be presenting their findings? It will be interesting to see how they treat the winter with some of the highest oil prices ever in their assessment of how this program works. And the number of windows and doors for each house. Meh. I’ll have to see the report.
Great work BTW….but God how I wish we had a newspaper in this freaking state.