Class Warfare – Page 3

August 25, 2016August 27, 2016

Layoffs at DHS have already affected services in Woonsocket

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People in need of social services are being turn away from the Woonsocket branch of the RI Department of Human Services (DHS) as the offices are in the midst of a downsizing and relocation.

On Tuesday some clients went to the DHS offices in Woonsocket and were told that they could not access the services they needed. They were referred to the Pawtucket offices, requiring a four hour bus ride, two hours each way. DHS employees in Woonsocket said their branch right now can only deliver “limited services.” I was told that all questions regarding the move and reduced services needed to be referred to DHS director Melba Depeña Affigne.

The reason for the change in service seems to be related to 70 layoffs at DHS that, according to a news release, is the result of a new software system coming in September.

“Moving from a software system designed more than 30 years ago to a modern, digital system requires different staffing needs,” said Depeña Affigne in a news release from the Department of Administration sent today. There will be a 3pm press conference explaining the layoffs in detail.

“The new eligibility and enrollment software system will make it easier and more convenient for Rhode Islanders to access those vital services,” Depeña Affigne said in the press release.

Woonsocket DHS 002 — Notice on Woonsocket DHS door

DHS provides vital community and family assistance by way of food and cash assistance, child care assistance and Medicaid. DHS manages SNAP benefits, Rhode Island Works (RIW), Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), LTSS, General Public Assistance (GPA) and provides access to various energy assistance programs like HEAP, WAP and HSR.

The clients DHS serve are among the most vulnerable in the state, who often have difficulty with transportation and access to the internet. Closing offices, downsizing staff and limiting services, even if only for a month, could have catastrophic effects on families.

In a letter to SNAP Advisory Committee members, SNAP Administrator Iwona Ramian wrote that the lease for the current offices expires on August 31, and the effective date for the new offices is September 1, with transition between offices beginning Monday, August 22. Notification of the move was mailed to clients on Monday, meaning many people did not know about the gap in services.

Though Ramian in her letter says that “no gap in services is anticipated” the DHS website says, “The Woonsocket office is providing limited services” and refers clients to other locations.

Further calling Woonsocket DHS services into question is Ramian’s assertion that staffing levels at the Woonsocket office will be reduced from 36 to 14. The 22 employees who will no longer be in Woonsocket are being relocated to Providence.

A drop to 14 staff members is a big reduction. The implementation of a new on-line system for determining eligibility and needs was supposed to be in place before the change in location and reduction in staff, but the new system is experiencing delays.

Ramian notes that “the [new] office space will be shared with a comprehensive multi-service, non-profit, health and human services agency, giving customers a one-stop service location. The office telephone and facsimile numbers will stay the same. She’s referring to Community Care Alliance, a multi-service not-for-profit health and human services provider consisting of the original community mental health center serving the 6-town region, a school, the Woonsocket Family Shelter, the Northern RI Family Visitation Center (for DCYF-involved families), a youth success program, day treatment, partial hospital and acute stabilization for substance use and co-occurring behavioral health disorders and more.

Calls to the DHS offices have not been returned.

August 24, 2016August 26, 2016

‘Essentially our advisory opinion means nothing’

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The Burrillville Planning Board meeting, held on Monday evening, was a confusing muddle that revealed the structural weaknesses of the “process” that Governor Gina Raimondo implored the people of Burrillville to trust in.

The board was meeting to vote to approve the final version of its required advisory opinion to the EFSB (Energy Facilities Siting Board) concerning Invenergy’s $700 million fracked gas and diesel oil burning power plant, a scheme that is wildly unpopular with Burrillville residents.

The powerlessness of a small, town appointed board in the face of a multi-billion dollar company with state government support was aptly demonstrated when board chair Jeffrey Partington lamented that “one of the weaknesses of this entire [process] is that we haven’t seen plans” from Invenergy.

The “process” is designed so that a town planning board has to decide to endorse or oppose a plan that will have enormous impact on the town, without seeing the actual plans.

This is by intent.

Conservation Law Foundation attorney Jerry Elmer has pointed out that the process “was designed to take the power to stop a proposal like Invenergy’s out of the hands of the local people… and put it into the hands of the EFSB.”

Hours of meetings and endless discussions have consumed the board’s time and the energy and efforts of local townsfolk. Yet the board’s own attorney, Michael McElroy, succinctly summed it up when he said, “Essentially our advisory opinion means nothing. It’s simply an advisory opinion. The EFSB can take it, they can take it in part, or they can reject it.”

At this meeting we learned that though Invenergy is confident that they can design the power plant to meet the noise ordinances set by the town, they have no intention of posting a bond to insure that this goal is met. An expert hired by the town has said that though he has never seen a power plant meet noise requirements so low and that such a thing has never been done, he believes it might be possible.

“It may be difficult and it may be expensive,” noise expert David Hessler cautioned, adding, “I think it can be done.”

Later in the same meeting Hessler admitted that he had “never seen a power plant meet the noise levels” but reiterated that he thinks this plant can be designed to do so.

Maybe this is why Invenergy won’t post a bond: What bonding company wants to insure a project that may well prove to be impossible? Not agreeing to post a bond may also be a legal strategy. The EFSB, when they decide on the final terms of the deal, might include a bonding that Invenergy agreed to, but more likely the EFSB will simply give Invenergy a waiver on the noise level, allowing the company to disregard Burrillville’s ordinance, without bringing up the bonding issue at all.

Why post a bond to meet a requirement you intend to have waived?

So all the sturm und drang over low octave vs. decibel limits on noise may well be for naught. “Essentially our advisory opinion means nothing,” said McElroy.

Here in Rhode Island we call that, “the process.”

Here’s the full video of the Burrillville Planning Board meeting.

August 23, 2016August 26, 2016

GoLocalProv misses the point, but good try

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Ultimately, the fault is with me, for not being more clear in my writing.

John DeSimone is a lawyer in private practice and he’s House Majority Leader in the RI General Assembly. When he crafts, shapes and votes on legislation, we trust that he will separate his two jobs in his mind. For instance, we trust that he will not allow the fact that he represents restaurant owners who engage in wage theft to shape the way he approaches restaurant and employment law. But in order for voters to be able to judge for themselves whether or not this is happening, they need to understand the kind of cases DeSimone is working on and what side he takes in these cases.

This is partly what I was trying to get at when I wrote about Leader DeSimone’s legal work for Chung Cho, owner of Gourmet Heaven, but there are other distictions to be drawn.

When GoLocalProv reporter and editor Kate Nagle read my piece, she was inspired. She attempted on Jason Knight, who is running in the Democratic primary against conservative Democrat Jan Malik in House District 57. (DeSimone, a conservative Democrat, is facing a challenge to his House seat from progressive Marcia Ranglin-Vassell, so the shape of the politics here becomes obvious.) Nagle wrote that Knight, “has represented DUIs, child pornographers, and sex offender clients since starting his own practice.”

Then she wrote, “The relevance of Knight’s practice and other attorneys running for office derives from a new focus on who candidates are representing in their practices. Last week, incumbent House Majority Leader John DeSimone came under fire for his representation of an accused wage-theft client. The criticism came in part from RI Future‘s Steve Ahlquist, who wrote that voters ‘should know when the people we elect to represent us also defend the monsters who oppress us.’” [spelling corrected]

It’s nice to learn that GoLocal is learning about journalism from closely reading RI Future, but I think they might need a few more lessons. Nagle quotes me in the piece twice, without linking to my writing as I did for her above. (Here’s a handy guide to linking.)

“Voters should know when the people we elect to represent us also defend the monsters who oppress us,” I wrote, “Anybody being sued deserves legal representation, but using slick legal moves to avoid paying workers their earned wages is simply gross.”

Nagle also quoted my tweet about my story, in which I said, ”What attorneys do for their clients should be relevant to how voters perceive their ethical orientation.”

The tweet above was in answer to a criticism from Brandon Bell, director of the RI GOP. Bell tweeted, “As an attorney I am an advocate for client which does not equate with accepting or endorsing client’s alleged wrongdoing.”

In my retort to Bell I was making a subtle distinction. It’s not WHO you represent, it’s WHAT you do for them.

Jason Knight defined the role of a defense attorney very well when he was quoted by Nagle: “…in a criminal case, there’s a judge, a prosecutor and defender, and all three roles need to be done well for a just result. I need a fair judge, and a zealous prosecutor — and a defense attorney who basically keeps the prosecutor honest.”

In my piece about DeSimone, I wrote that DeSimone was not only defending Chung Cho on allegations of wage theft, he was actively helping Cho to sell his business in what the RI Center for Justice called “an attempt to evade liability.” I wrote:

“DeSimone filed Cho’s legal response to the Rhode Island lawsuit on May 11, 2015. About a week later, on May 20, 2015, Cho sold Gourmet Heaven to GSP Corp for half a million dollars. At least some of the transactional paperwork for this sale was prepared by DeSimone.”

This kind of slick legal maneuvering isn’t about keeping the prosecutors honest or achieving a fair trial, it’s about helping a boss to plead poverty and avoid paying workers who, absent wages, were essentially reduced to slavery conditions.

Rather than creating a list of people who committed terrible crimes and attaching them to DeSimone’s name, as Nagle did in her piece about Knight, I wrote a piece outlining the kind of legal maneuvers DeSimone engaged in to protect a wage thief from having to pay his employees.

Perhaps such legal maneuvering is perfectly legal. Perhaps it’s all in line with the professional ethics of being a lawyer. But is it right? And does it call into question DeSimone’s suitability for the elected position he holds?

I’ll let the voters decide.

More pertinent to the discussion at hand, is this what Nagle was attempting in her piece about Knight?

I’ll let the readers decide.

August 20, 2016August 26, 2016

Trump hits Minneapolis, the city hits back

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Coincidentally, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump came to Minneapolis MN on the same day I made my first visit to the city. This turned a day that I had planned to spend sightseeing into a day of traveling to three different anti-Trump events.

“Trump’s rhetoric is creating an unsafe environment for the Muslim community, for the Somali-American community, and we have seen an increase in Islamaphobia and anti-Muslim efforts across the state of Minnesota,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations- Minnesota (CAIR-MN), “We have seen, just a few weeks ago, an incident involving five young Muslim men who were shot… we believe that incident is a hate crime.”

Hussein believes that Trump’s extremist rhetoric is creating a hostile, unsafe environment for Muslim Americans and immigrants, and the effects are being felt by the most vulnerable.

Hussein introduced 13-year old Yusuf Dayur who has been experiencing bullying in his school because he is a Muslim. Hussein suggested that Dayur might one day be president. Though Dayur’s school is very proactive in providing Dayur time and space in which to pray, some of his fellow students do not trust him because he is a Muslim. Dayur bravely fought back tears as he described the difficulties he faces.

Jaylani Hussein’s full comments:

After the press conference I headed across town to the Minnesota State Republican Offices where Cosecha Minnesota was holding a “Wall Off Trump” event. Cosecha is “a nonviolent decentralized movement that is focused on activating our immigrant community and the public to guarantee permanent and humane protection for immigrants in this country.”

Estaphania and another woman explained that their protest, in which they painted a wall, like the one Trump is promising on the Texas-Mexico border, is meant to draw attention to Trump’s extremist rhetoric that threatens the health and safety of immigrant Americans.

My last stop was at the Minneapolis Convention Center, where people representing virtually everyone Trump has ever publicly maligned, including immigrants, black Americans, members of the LGBTQ community, women, Muslims, indigenous Americans and more, gathered together to denounce Trump ahead of his visit to a large donor rally.

This protest was organized by MIRAc, the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee, a group that, “fights for legalization for all, an end to immigration raids & deportations, an end to all anti-immigrant laws, and full equality in all areas of life.”

Trump did not make a public appearance in Minnesota, or even speak to the press. He spoke to donors only at the Convention Center. But his very presence in the city was enough to galvanize this group to come out to speak, sing, dance and chant their opposition to Trump being president.

According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, after this event, as Trump donors left the convention center, they were confronted by angry demonstrators. “The demonstrators who harassed donors were not present earlier on, when the protest was peaceful. Many in the later group hid their faces behind scarves,” writes reporter Patrick Condon, “Minneapolis police spokeswoman Sgt. Catherine Michal said there were no arrests and no reported injuries. There was, however, minor damage, including graffiti on the walls of the Convention Center, and officers had to escort Trump supporters in and out of the lobby because they were being harshly confronted, Michal said.”

Below are the rest of the pictures and video from the three events.

2016-08-19 CAIR-MN 001 — Jaylani Hussein, CAIR-MN

August 18, 2016August 26, 2016

CLF to PUC: Burrillville plant not needed

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The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) today presented its arguments against Invenergy’s proposed $700 million fracked gas and diesel oil burning power plant in a brief filed with the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC). The PUC is charged with rendering an advisory opinion to the Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB) the board that will have the final say in whether the proposed plant gets built. In putting together their advisory opinion, the PUC will be considering briefs from the CLF, Invenergy, the Town of Burrillville and the Division of Public Utilities and Carriers (Division).

The PUC’s mandate is to “conduct an investigation … and render an advisory opinion” as to the “need for the proposed facility,” says CLF attorneys Max Greene and Jerry Elmer in their brief, quoting Rhode Island General Laws § 42-98-9(d). The CLF “therefore presented unrefuted evidence that shows the plant is not needed, in the form of testimony from expert witness Robert Fagan.”

Though Invenergy’s expert witnesses “profess to disagree” with Fagan, they argue that the plant will provide a “social surplus” of energy and not that the plant is actually needed, says the CLF in their brief. In the recent ISO-NE forward capacity auction, Invenergy only sold half its capacity. If you subtract out Invenergy’s contribution to the energy markets the region still has nearly 1,000 megawatts of excess capacity, says the CLF.

Further, Invenergy and the Division presented no evidence at the hearings that the plant is needed. Instead, Invenergy made the claim that if the power plant sold energy in an ISO-NE forward capacity auction, this proves the plant must be needed. The CLF argues that this is incorrect, maintaining that “… a CSO is not a showing of need but the result of a complex market mechanism that takes into account other factors such as cost.”

But even if we accept the “CSO equals need” argument, says the CLF, neither Invenergy nor the Division “has presented evidence to show that the proposed Invenergy plant is needed. This is because Invenergy has proposed a two-turbine, 1,000 MW plant but has not obtained a CSO for a two-turbine, 1,000 MW plant.” What Invenergy is defending is a one turbine plant, since that’s what sold at auction.

The PUC must consider the need of the power plant as proposed. What Invenergy has proposed is a two-turbine, 1,000 MW plant. As the CLF brief makes clear, “Invenergy has not obtained a CSO for a two-turbine, 1,000 MW plant,” it has, at best, demonstrated the need for a “485 MW project.”

“Not once does the EFSB Order describe the proposed Invenergy plant under consideration as a single-turbine, 485 MW generator. Instead, the Order says the proposed plant ‘will have a nominal power output at base load of approximately 850-1,000 megawatts” and that the plant will consist of two units. So defined, ‘the proposed facility’ and ‘the Project’ do not have a CSO.”

The PUC’s advisory opinion is due at the EFSB before final hearings start in September. The briefs from all intervenors are due at 4pm today (Thursday).

August 17, 2016August 19, 2016

Sidewalk 7 activists head to trial in resistance to fracked-gas

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Four of the seven activists arrested for blocking the driveway at Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) headquarters during Beyond Extreme Energy’s #RubberStampRebellion in May are taking their cases to trial.

Defendants and supporters at courthouse in D.C.

At the Superior Court of the District of Columbia yesterday, #Sidewalk7 members Claude Guillemard of Baltimore, MD, Ellen Taylor of Washington, D.C., and Donald Weightman of Philadelphia, PA, said that they would go to trial, set for Dec. 8, for their May 9 blockade at the FERC.

Peter Nightingale, of Kingston, RI, was arraigned only yesterday because he was out of the country during the first court date. He says he intends to go to trial. BXE and other groups have long criticized the agency for rubber-stamping fracked-gas pipelines, compressor stations and export facilities that it reviews.

“We have been charged with unlawful entry,” Weightman said, “but the real crime is the unlawful entry of methane and carbon dioxide into our air, the unlawful entry of toxic waste into our water, and the unlawful entry of global warming into the future of our world. The real weapon is fracked gas; FERC is the real defendant; we will charge FERC with the commission of a crime.”

The other three #Sidewalk7 activists – Melinda Tuhus of Connecticut, Clarke Herbert of Virginia and Linda Reik of New York – agreed to perform 32 hours of community service and to stay away from the 800 block of 1st Avenue NE, the area of the FERC offices, for four months.

The court actions yesterday were part of the ongoing resistance to fracked-gas infrastructure, including demanding a halt to expansion of Spectra’s AIM Project pipeline. #StopSpectra activists have declared a “state of emergency” in advance of a noon press conference Thursday outside the Manhattan offices of Sens. Charles Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. The senators wrote a letter to FERC on Aug. 3 calling for construction to stop. In February, Gov. Andrew Cuomo also asked FERC to postpone the pipeline expansion.

After the court hearing, New York, BXE, and Fossil Free Rhode Island activists hand-delivered invitations to the press conference to the senators’ Washington offices.

The pipeline “would bring fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New England, despite a report from the Massachusetts Attorney General that shows no need for this gas,” the letter said. “In NY, if completed, the AIM Pipeline would carry gas through residential communities and within 105 feet of critical Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant safety facilities.

Just last April, Spectra Energy’s Texas Eastern line erupted into a giant explosion due to pipeline corrosion, and New Yorkers fear what an explosion of this magnitude could mean in such close proximity to Indian Point. Over the last several years, communities along the pipeline route have risen up against the pipeline, and are counting on New York senators to help stop this dangerous project.”

Activists delivered a letter from Fossil Free Rhode Island to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s office. The senator is generally considered to be a climate champion, but he supports fracked gas as a bridge fuel. The letter asks the senator to change his position so that it is consistent with science and with the nation’s obligations under international treaties, the Rio Declaration in particular. The letter ends stating: “As a small step in that direction, maybe you could start by following Bill McKibben’s suggestion, ‘correcting the outmoded way the EPA calculates the warming effect of methane.’”

In June, DeSmog Blog reported that a FERC employee who was the agency’s project manager for reviewing the then-proposed AIM pipeline had been hired by an engineering company that is one of Spectra’s main contractors. DeSmog Blog reported in May and July that a contractor hired by FERC to conduct an environmental review of a Spectra project was already working on related Spectra pipeline projects. U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey have written to FERC Chairman Norman Bay asking about the “potential conflicts of interest.”

A campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience is also ongoing in West Roxbury, MA, where 165 people have been arrested so far blocking construction of the West Roxbury Lateral pipeline. Resist the Pipeline is coordinating those actions. In addition, the City Council, mayor, the state representative, state senator and U.S. Congressman Stephen Lynch oppose the project.

Boston City Council President Michelle Wu said, “Climate change impacts us all and especially future generations. We need immediate, bold action to transition rapidly away from reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy. Building new natural gas infrastructure, such as Spectra Energy’s West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline, is wrong for our communities and wrong for future generations. I applaud the thoughtful, purposeful, nonviolent civil disobedience West Roxbury residents and friends are practicing to accomplish what needs to get done.”

In addition, Massachusetts’ highest court ruled today that the state can’t force residential ratepayers to subsidize the construction of pipelines. “This is an incredibly important and timely decision,” said David Ismay, lead attorney on the case for Conservation Law Foundation. “Today our highest court affirmed Massachusetts’ commitment to an open energy future by rejecting the Baker Administration’s attempt to subsidize the dying fossil fuel industry. The course of our economy and our energy markets runs counter to the will of multi-billion dollar pipeline companies, and, thanks to today’s decision, the government will no longer be able to unfairly and unlawfully tip the scales.”
[Based on a BXE press release.]

August 17, 2016August 26, 2016

Court kills pipeline tariff in Mass, RI still considering

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As the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission considers a request from National Grid to have ratepayers help subsidize a controversial pipeline project, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against such pipeline tariffs in a decision released Wednesday.

“This is an incredibly important and timely decision,’ said David Ismay, the Conservation Law Foundation’s lead attorney on the case. ‘Today our highest court affirmed Massachusetts’ commitment to an open energy future by rejecting the Baker Administration’s attempt to subsidize to the dying fossil fuel industry. The course of our economy and our energy markets runs counter to the will of multi-billion dollar pipeline companies, and thanks to today’s decision, the government will no longer be able to unfairly and unlawfully tip the scales in their favor.”

The ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court may have an impact on National Grid‘s proposed “pipeline tariff” here in Rhode Island. The Massachusetts court deemed “it unlawful for Massachusetts to force residential electricity customers to subsidize the construction of private gas pipelines, requiring the companies themselves to shoulder the substantial risks of such projects rather than allowing that risk to be placed on hardworking families across the Commonwealth,” according the the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) who brought the case.

The CLF was the plaintiff in the Massachusetts case. The CLF maintained in their motion to intervene in the Rhode Island case that “an electricity distribution company” entering “into a contract for natural gas transportation capacity and storage services” and receiving “cost recovery for its gas contract from electricity ratepayers” is “something that has never occurred in the United States since the Federal Power Act was enacted in 1935, during President Roosevelt’s first term in office.”

Megan Herzog, one of the two lawyers representing the CLF before the RIPUC said in a phone call that the “pipeline is a bad deal for the whole region and that the Massachusetts court affirmed that.” Though the judge ruled on the case using Massachusetts law, there are statutes in Rhode Island that reflect similar principles.

According to Craig S. Altemose, a senior advisor forthe anti-LNG advocacy group 350 Mass for a Better Future, “It is unclear how much this will be a fatal blow to any of Spectra’s proposed projects, but we have absolutely undercut their financing (to the tune of $3 billion), called into question similar pipeline tax proposals in other states, [italics added] and have given Spectra’s investors greater reason for pause. Either way, we have unambiguously won a victory that the people’s money should be not used for private projects that further commit us to climate catastrophe.”

“Today’s decision reinforces what we already know: it’s not in the public interest to subsidize new fossil fuel infrastructure. It deals a serious blow to companies like Spectra who wanted to subsidize their risky projects with handouts from ratepayers. Communities facing an onslaught of fracked gas projects in their backyards like those in Burrillville have good reason to feel hopeful right now. We urge Governor [Gina] Raimondo and the Rhode Island PUC to follow the lead of Massachusetts and reject the pipeline tax,” Ben Weilerstein, Rhode Island community organizer with Toxics Action Center said.

Though the ruling in Massachusetts has no statutory value in Rhode Island, it may establish some lines of legal reasoning that will be helpful as the Rhode Island Public Utilities (RIPUC) Commission decides on Docket 4267, the Rhode Island part of National Grid’s ambitious plan to charge electrical ratepayers not only for pipeline infrastructure investments, but also to guarantee the company’s profits as they do so.

National Grid responded with the following statement: “This is a disappointing setback for the project, which is designed to help secure New England’s clean energy future, ensure the reliability of the electricity system, and most importantly, save customers more than $1 billion annually on their electricity bills. We will explore our options for a potential path forward with Access Northeast and pursue a balanced portfolio of solutions to provide the clean, reliable, and secure energy our customers deserve. While natural gas remains a key component in helping to secure New England’s long-term energy future, the recently passed clean energy bill also presents a welcomed opportunity to support the development of large-scale clean energy, such as hydro and wind.”

Yesterday The RIPUC held a hearing on Docket 4627, asking National Grid to explain why it used such a “broad brush” in redacting information in its application. In the meeting announcement it was said that RIPUC Chair Margaret Curran thought “it is not intuitively clear how the information redacted falls within the exception to the Access to Public Records Act.” Much of what National Grid argues that much of what it wants to keep secret falls into the category of trade secrets, and releasing the information would put it at an unfair disadvantage with competitors, such as NextEra Energy Resources, LLC (NextEra).

As pointed out previously, National Grid will not release how much money ratepayers will be on the hook for if this idea is approved by the RIPUC.

Here’s full video of the hearing:

NextEra brought a separate motion to allow its lawyers access to highly confidential parts of National Grid’s application.

Here’s the full video of that hearing:

The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) released the following statement today in response to the favorable decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Conservation Law Foundation v. Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities (DPU):

‘This is an incredibly important and timely decision,’ said David Ismay, CLF’s lead attorney on the case. ‘Today our highest court affirmed Massachusetts’ commitment to an open energy future by rejecting the Baker Administration’s attempt to subsidize to the dying fossil fuel industry. The course of our economy and our energy markets runs counter to the will of multi-billion dollar pipeline companies, and thanks to today’s decision, the government will no longer be able to unfairly and unlawfully tip the scales in their favor.’

According to the opinion by Justice Cordy, DPU’s 2015 rule (“Order 15-37”) allowing Massachusetts electric customers to be charged for the construction of interstate gas pipelines is prohibited by the plain languages of statutes that have been the law of the land in Massachusetts for almost two decades.

In his opinion, Justice Cordy wrote, Order 15-37 is ‘invalid in light of the statutory language and purpose of G. L. c. 164, § 94A, as amended by the restructuring act, because, among other things, it would undermine the main objectives of the act and reexpose ratepayers to the types of financial risks from which the Legislature sought to protect them.’

August 16, 2016August 17, 2016

Grim Wisdom talks with Mike Araujo

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Mike Araujo agreed to meet with me a second time for another podcast, so here it is! Topics include revolution, agency, and the labor movement (if there is such a thing–opinions differ). We also talked a little about the aspirational and inspirational Black Lives Matter platform, but we had some slight disagreements as to the best way to implement it, probably none of which will surprise you. In any event, enjoy!

August 15, 2016August 26, 2016

Leader DeSimone’s legal skills help wage thief

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House Majority Leader John DeSimone is also a lawyer and one of his clients is Chung Cho, a restaurant owner who was fined for wage theft in Connecticut and, more recently, faces a lawsuit for allegedly stealing wages from his employees at Gourmet Heaven in downtown Providence.

“Defendants are without sufficient knowledge or information to admit or deny that plaintiffs were employed by Gourmet Heaven,” wrote DeSimone in a court filing on behalf of Cho.

Cho is facing a lawsuit from eight workers in Rhode Island for unpaid wages in violation of the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and the Rhode Island Minimum Wage Act. The eight workers are being represented by Robert McCreanor and Marissa Janton of the RI Center for Justice. Gourmet Heaven, which Cho recently sold, has been the center of several public demonstrations.

In Connecticut, Cho was charged with “42 felony and misdemeanor counts of wage theft, larceny, and defrauding immigrant workers after a 2013 Connecticut Department of Labor investigation found that Cho owed over $218,000 in unpaid wages” to two dozen restaurant employees, according to a court filing.

The Center for Justice initially filed its lawsuit in February, 2015, after “several requests for extension of the deadline for filing responsive pleadings”. DeSimone filed Cho’s legal response to the Rhode Island lawsuit on May 11, 2015. About a week later, on May 20, 2015, Cho sold Gourmet Heaven to GSP Corp for half a million dollars. At least some of the transactional paperwork for this sale was prepared by DeSimone.

GSP Corp had come into existence about a month earlier, on April 9, “listing 173
Weybosset Street … as its address and Dae Hyun Yoo as its registered agent,” according to the lawsuit. Gourmet Heaven was incorporated at this address, which is also where the restaurant is located. “Dae Hyun Yoo (aka David Yoo) is the Chief Executive Officer of B.C.S. International Corporation (B.C.S.), a wholesale food supply company,” according to the filing. “While operating Gourmet Heaven, LLC, Defendant Chung Cho regularly ordered inventory from B.C.S. and two of its subsidiaries, Hyun Dai International Food Corp and New York Cheese Corp.”

After the sale was finalized on September 14, “$225,389.11 of the $500,000 purchase price was paid directly to B.C.S., Hyun Dai International Food Corp, and New York Cheese Corp, purportedly to satisfy existing debts.” In the closing statement, Chung Cho is listed as receiving only “$1,620.78 from the $500,000 purchase price” after other debts were settled.

In response to this “sale” (quotation marks are included in the complaint) the Center for Justice amended its complaint to include GSP Corp as a defendant., believing the “sale” is merely an attempt to evade liability. GSP Corp hired Brian LaPlante and Michael J Jacobs as lawyers and have moved to have the complaint against them dismissed. A judge will hear the motion on September 20.

Selling the business and pleading poverty to avoid responsibility seems to be Cho’s signature move. One month after he was arrested in Connecticut, he sold his Connecticut Gourmet Heaven stores to Good Nature Café Inc, which was incorporated the previous October.

After selling his Connecticut stores, “on September 30, 2015 Defendant Chung Cho filed for personal bankruptcy in Connecticut,” says the complaint, “In December of 2015 Defendant Chung Cho testified at a hearing in Connecticut that he has no assets, contradicting a previous sworn statement that he possessed between $1 million and $10 million in assets.”

Back in Providence, on September 16, 2015, GSP Corp took over operation of the store located at 173 Weybosset Street, and renamed it Serendipity Gourmet. “The store continues operation at the same address, with many of the same employees, and sells the same products. The signage on the store uses the same font and colors, and the word ‘Gourmet’ still appears in the name. Signs on the exterior of the store proclaimed that it was ‘under new management.’”

In March of this year, GSP Corp applied for a new food dispenser and holiday sales license with the Providence Board of Licenses for their newly minted Serendipity Gourmet. The board’s attorney is Louis DeSimone, Representative John DeSimone’s cousin.

Voters should know when the people we elect to represent us also defend the monsters who oppress us. Anybody being sued deserves legal representation, but using slick legal moves to avoid paying workers their earned wages is simply gross.

DeSimone is facing a challenge to his House seat from Marcia Ranglin-Vassell.

DeSimone did not respond to requests for comment.

August 11, 2016August 26, 2016

Department of Health hears testimony on Burrillville power plant

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The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) held a public comment hearing in Burrillville Tuesday to solicit opinions on the potential health effects of building Invenergy‘s proposed $700 million fracked gas and diesel oil burning power plant. RIDOH has been tasked by the Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) to create a non-binding advisory opinion on potential public health concerns relating to the project, including but not limited to biological responses to power frequency, electric, and magnetic fields associated with the operation of the power plant, and the potential impacts on the quality of drinking water associated with the construction and operation of the plant. The final report is due in early September.

RIDOH has released a first draft of their report, which was consumed by Burrillville residents opposed to the plant. Much of the public comment centered around the idea that RIDOH wasn’t taking into account the compounded effects of the gas infrastructure in and around Burrillville but was instead concentrating on the proposed power plant by itself.

Perhaps the most dramatic moment of the evening came when Stephanie Sloman rose to give her testimony.

“I had a whole speech prepared,” said Sloman (see video #20 below), “but I noticed that Invenergy’s sitting over there, and I refuse to speak and read my speech in front of these people. I don’t think they should even be here, frankly.”

The evening’s meeting was made harder on residents of the town because at the same time as this meeting there was a meeting of the Harrisville Fire District and Water Board. This meant that some people (including me) had to run out to the other meeting and then return to the RIDOH hearing, still in progress.

Several Burrillville residents noted that Governor Gina Raimondo, during her visit to Burrillville in July, recommended that residents get involved in and trust the process. That seems awfully hard to do when two important meetings are scheduled at the same time .

Below is all the video from the event.

August 10, 2016

Grim Wisdom talks with Jeanine Calkin

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After a long break, the Grim Wisdom Podcast is back. In this week’s episode, I sit down with RI State Senate candidate Jeanine Calkin to discuss her candidacy, economic inequality, the slow heat death of American journalism, and the cynical hypocrisy of her opponent. Oh, and we also talk about climate change and economic development. Enjoy the bleakness! :)

August 9, 2016

Noise, air pollution from proposed power plant would ruin Burrillville

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OER fudges reality and ignores impact of escaping methane—see disclaimer in lower-left corner.

On Tuesday August 9, the Rhode Island Department of health (RIDOH) will hold a hearing on Invenergy’s proposed gigawatt fossil fuel power plant in Burrillville, aka the Clear River Energy Center (CREC). The meeting will start at 5:30 pm at Burrillville HighSchool, 425 East Avenue, Harrisville, Rhode Island 02830.

As part of the process, RIDOH issued an advisory opinion. Even a cursory reading of the document reveals issues so serious that they should prevent the construction of CREC. Yet another Rhode Island administrative body that lacks enthusiasm for the project!

RIDOH identifies serious negative health impacts of noise:

According to the WHO [World Health Organization], sleep disturbance, one of the most common complaints raised by noise-exposed populations, can have a major impact on health and quality of life. People can recognize and react to sounds, even when asleep. Those reactions, including wakening and changes in sleep stage, are associated with daytime after-effects, such as sleepiness, reduced cognitive and motor performance, and impairment of cardiovascular function.

The RIDOH opinion also quotes written testimony of Julia O’Rourke, who lives on Wallum Lake Road in Burrillville:

Specifically, in the past year, I have experienced excessive noise and vibrations coming from the Algonquin Compressor Station site which this project will be located next to. The noise and vibrations emanating from this site are extremely disruptive and negatively impacting our health and we are unable to sleep or enjoy the peace and quiet of our home. I am concerned that the noise levels and vibration are only going to increase during the construction and operational phase of this project.

Clearly, the neighborhood around the CREC site and Spectra Energy’s compressor station will become unlivable. RIDOH suggests, if the plant were to be built, that Spectra Energy and Invenergy install sound proofing and buy “properties subject to noise levels that cause serious annoyance and/or sleep disruption.”

RIDOH’s opinion mentions that questions have also been raised as to whether National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) of the Environmental Protection Agency adequately protect public health. We, and probably others, indeed raised those questions—those and quite a few others—in this public comment. The federal standards fail to account for short-lived pollution spikes which are typical for the operation of compressor stations and power plants. Nitrous oxides are are highly problematic in this respect. In addition, there are lots of other problems with “data” Invenergy’s submitted to the Energy Facility Siting Board.

Sure, we could go ahead with the construction of the power plant and turn Burrillville into a major air pollution dump. Is that justified simply to create a couple of jobs and export electricity to the Northeast? Can we justify that simply because “no states have promulgated a short-term NO₂ standard that is more stringent than the NAAQS and the process for adopting such standards is arduous?”

Interestingly, RIDOH is much more advanced in its understanding of the effect of the proposed power plant than the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources. RIDOH states:

The burning of fossil fuels and the extraction of fossil fuels by “fracking” both contribute to climate change by emitting various greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, most notably carbon dioxide and methane. Both have the effect of harming the health of Rhode Islanders now and in the future.

Of course, most of the methane problem occurs long before the fracked gas reaches Rhode Island. Information in a recent presentation of Rhode Island’s Office of Energy Resources shows that the office explicitly ignores such effects.

Not only does the office ignore basic science, it is also out of sync with federal guidelines on how the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change should be taken into account. Those guidelines, issued last week, explicitly call for:

Taking into account reasonably foreseeable direct, indirect, and cumulative GHG emissions and climate effects;
Consideration of reasonable alternatives and the short- and long-term effects and benefits in the analysis of alternatives and mitigation

Unless we change course, Rhode Island will be doing neither. RIDOH writes:

We cannot measure the direct contribution of the proposed plant, or of any single facility, to public health by means of climate change.

Sure, but if we forge ahead without understanding what we do, we are in violation of the precautionary principle of the Rio Declaration, an international treaty signed and ratified by the U.S. This is the supreme law of the land:

Principle 15

In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

How about we cannot “measure the direct contribution” of the plant to global warming? True enough, but we can easily estimate the impact of the national policy of which construction of the plant is part. Because natural gas is worse for the climate than oil and coal, the conclusion is simple: given the rate at which natural gas escapes unburned, and before the use of methane starts paying off, we’ll be dead, leaving an uninhabitable planet for future generations.

August 9, 2016

Not enough water for proposed power plant and future growth

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On August 9, the Harrisville Fire District in its monthly meeting will discuss how to respond to Invenergy’s request for the supply of water for its proposed power plant in Burrillville, the Clear River Energy Center (CREC). For time and place follow this link.

Future water shortages caused by CREC have been a topic of discussion and speculation for many months. That indeed there is a serious risk is clear from information contained in documents obtained from several Rhode Island departments in response to Fossil Free RI‘s request made under the Access to Public Records Act.

As a reminder, the following is worth quoting from a previous post based on documents supplied by the RI Department of Health:

According to a presentation at a meeting about CREC attended by several state agencies, 0.18 MGD (million of gallons of water per day) will be left for growth if the power plant is built. June Swallow of the Center for Drinking Water Quality at the Rhode Island Department of Health attended the meeting. Her longhand notes show that Harrisville and Pascoag each are expected to need 0.12 MGD for growth. This suggests a deficit of 0.24 MGD – 0.18 MGD = 0.06 MGD.

Also documents supplied by the RI Department of Environmental Management raise concern. There is, for example, the following email exchange between Alisa Richardson of RIDEM and Ken Burke formerly of the Rhode Island Water Resources Board:

Thanks Alisa,
I think we should talk about having the Town acknowledge that with low flow conditions and high energy demands, that the Town is effectively pledging most (if not all) of its available water to this development. This local decision is theirs to make. Will someone from the Town also be at this meeting?
Thank you,
Kenneth J. Burke, P.E.MBA
General Manager/Treasurer

This email (my emphasis) appears on page 50 of this document. There is more of interest, but the conclusion is the same; search the document for “Alisa” and “Ken.”

Also Stephanie Sloman, a retired environmental engineer who worked for a large electroplating plant in Massachusetts, weighed in. She submitted a thorough and detailed testimony to the Invenergy docket of the Energy Facility Siting Board.

Her conclusion is that, no matter how you look at it, there is not enough water for future growth in Burrillville and the other towns that draw from the same source.

Clearly, the RI departments of Environmental Management and Health, and the Water Resources Board are aware of the looming water supply problem. As Stephanie Sloman explains, anyone capable of elementary arithmetic can check this. As she points out, Invenergy is apparently is not one of those.

Recently, Gina Raimondo mentioned that she would withdraw her support for the CREC project if there were any issues. Of course, trouble with the water supply is only one of a myriad of issues each single one of which should suffice for her to make good on that promise.

August 5, 2016August 26, 2016

National Grid says cost of proposed ratepayer fee is a trade secret

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National Grid will not reveal the amount of money they hope to charge customers in their proposed pipeline tariff. That information is a trade secret, and will not be revealed until after the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (RIPUC) decides on the proposal.

On Tuesday evening RIPUC heard public testimony against National Grid’s plan to charge customers for its efforts in building fracked gas pipelines and infrastructure in our state. National Grid also wants ratepayers to guarantee their profits for the venture as well. After the hearing I searched in vain through National Grid’s 572 page application for anything that would indicate how much this plan would cost. Finally I wrote Todd Bianco, principal policy associate at RIPUC for clarification.

“I do not believe there are any costs or rates in the filing that have not been redacted and marked as confidential. You should contact National Grid’s attorney or their spokesperson to confirm that,” said Bianco.

Following Bianco’s advice, I wrote to David Graves, National Grid’s Rhode Island Director of Strategic Communications.

“Portions of the filing are redacted because the document includes confidential information,” wrote Graves in an email, “which if revealed, would give competitors an unfair advantage in building their bids. The same procedure is in place in commodity rate setting. The information is shared with the regulators and is used in their assessment of our proposed rates, but the hard numbers in the estimates are not shared publicly until after the contract has been awarded.”

Graves did note that ratepayer impacts are discussed in the application starting on page 545. All the important numbers for determining actual impacts have been redacted.

August 4, 2016September 16, 2016

Workers demand pay in early morning action

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2016-08-04 Fuerza Laboral 011 — David Civetti

David Civetti, CEO of Dependable and Affordable Cleaning Inc, got a wake up call early Thursday morning about the importance of paying employees for work done.

At about 6am over a dozen people from Fuerza Laboral arrived at Civetti’s Johnston home and knocked on his door, waking him from his sleep. Fuerza maintains that on May 26-29, Civetti’s company “assigned a group of workers to clean apartments located in the area surrounding Providence College. After the job was completed, 8 workers were not compensated for those 4 days, 11 hours a day.”

The excuse given at the time was that Civetti was not satisfied with the work that had been done, say the workers.

“What’s the problem?” asked Civetti answering the door after protesters rang his bell and yelled for him to come outside and talk with them. “I have no idea who anybody is. I have no idea who you are.”

“No?” asked a woman incredulously, “Do you know her? Do you know him?”

“No,” said Civetti, before eventually admitting that he recognized one of the workers present.

“You need to pay your workers,” said Heiny Maldonado, executive director of Fuerza Laboral.

Civetti shrugged. “Everybody who works for me gets paid.”

“Let me ask you a question,” said Civetti, “Did I hire you? Or did someone else bring you to work with them?”

“We worked for you.”

“Did I hire you?” asked Civetti again. “Rosa hired you. Did Rosa bring them? Rosa and Chris brought them to a job. I didn’t hire them.”

“We know the game,” said Raul Figueroa, organizer for Fuerza, “we deal with it every day.”

The game Figueroa was referring to is the practice of classifying some workers as subcontractors in an attempt to circumvent labor laws. By hiring people on as subcontractors, some companies try to avoid the costs associated with properly hiring workers and sometimes manage to not pay workers at all.

“We use sub-contractors from time to time,” admitted Civetti. “Rosa and Chris are sub-contractors. They are responsible for paying [their employees].”

Claiming that the workers were hired as subcontractors doesn’t let Civetti off the hook says Marissa Janton, a lawyer with the Rhode Island Center for Justice, a public interest law office that has teamed up with Fuerza Laboral. Under the law, an employer is defined by what he does, she said.

According to Janson, Civetti “directly employed” her clients. Civetti met them at a house on Eaton St. near Providence College where he keeps his cleaning supplies. He set their $10 an hour pay rate and assigned them to the houses they needed to clean. After they finished a house, the workers called Civetti who told them which house they needed to clean next, said Janson.

This all adds up to being an employee, maintains Janson, not a sub-contractor.

Workers at the early morning action reminded Civetti that they were given tee shirts emblazoned with the company logo to wear while they worked. Civetti said that he gives out lots of tee shirts, and asked if wearing a Dunkin Donuts tee shirt means he works there.

“It does if you’re pouring coffee,” said Justin Kelley, who assisted Fuerza as the police liaison for the morning’s action.

Ultimately, after nearly a quarter hour of contentious conversation, Civetti agreed to meet with the aggrieved workers to settle the issue next week.

Driving to Civetti’s home, the group passed many campaign signs advertising a Civetti running for the Johnston City Council. When asked about the signs Civetti replied that the signs were for his brother, Robert Civetti, a longtime Johnston resident and accountant

Not getting paid for work is something few of us can afford, but this practice seriously impacts low wage workers. Everyone needs to eat and pay rent after all, and a week working without pay is a serious injustice.

“It’s sad and disappointing to work so hard for someone who ends up stealing your wages, after working for over 40 hours,” said Maria Hoyos, one of the affected workers. She was involved with a direct action several years ago, demanding lost wages for other workers. She never thought this would happen to her. “Being told that your work was not done properly, just to use it as an excuse to not pay you is not only wrong but immoral.”

Below is the full interaction between Civetti and Fuerza Laboral.

August 3, 2016

People’s Power and Light opposes National Grid plan

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On the evening of Tuesday, August 2nd People’s Power & Light testified at the Public Utilities Commission, on behalf of Rhode Island consumers and electric ratepayers, against National Grid’s proposal to recover costs from the proposed Access Northeast natural gas pipeline through an electricity ratepayer tariff.

People’s Power & Light expressed several reasons why the Commission should reject National Grid’s Request for Approval of a Gas Capacity Contract and Cost Recovery, Docket 4627, and instead seek alternative resources to meet the region’s energy demand during peak winter times, such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, storage, and demand response. We expressed disagreement with the unprecedented proposal that electric customers pay for additional natural gas infrastructure. Why should consumers take on the long-term risk of a new, unnecessary natural gas pipeline?

People’s Power & Light’s public and written comments:

As a pro-consumer and pro-environment nonprofit organization, we at People’s Power & Light encourage the Commission to reject National Grid’s Request for Approval of a Gas Capacity Contract and Cost Recovery.

The pipeline tax is an outdated approach that conflicts with the widespread sustainability efforts that Rhode Island is already implementing across sectors.

The 2014 Resilient RI Act sets specific greenhouse gas reduction targets at 80% by 2050, with interim targets of 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 45 percent by 2035. Energy planners have an obligation to implement policies and projects that keep Rhode Island on track to meet those goals. As the Ocean State, we are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change; building additional natural gas infrastructure sets us back in the wrong direction and will only serve to increase polluting emissions.

When more consumers learn that they could be on the hook for the pipeline expenses, we can expect to hear more voices of opposition. In our neighboring state Massachusetts, legislation was submitted to prohibit the imposition of a pipeline tax on electricity ratepayers; the measure passed the Senate and a strong majority of the House signed a letter expressing support for the prohibition. We anticipate that a similar measure would see success here in Rhode Island if put to a vote in the General Assembly. Local constituents want to see our state reduce fossil fuel consumption cost-effectively and diversify our local energy mix with more efficiency and renewable sources. A new natural gas pipeline puts the long-term risk on ratepayers who do not want the pipeline in the first place. A recent poll conducted by our sister organization Mass Energy Consumers Alliance demonstrated overwhelming support to ban ratepayer financing of the Access Northeast pipeline. By a margin of over two to one (70%-30%), participants preferred alternatives to natural gas pipelines.

We must protect electric customers from being charged for a natural gas pipeline. Thank you for your time and for the opportunity to submit comments.

August 3, 2016August 3, 2016

National Grid wants RI ratepayers to guarantee its profits

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National Grid is requesting that the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (RIPUC) approve a 20-year gas capacity contract” with Algonquin Gas Transmission Company LLC (Algonquin) for natural gas transportation capacity and storage services on Algonquin’s Access Northeast Project (ANE Project).”

The multinational energy conglomerate not only wants Rhode Island ratepayers to subsidize the construction of fracked gas infrastructure, they want consumers to ensure that the project is profitable for the company.

Part of National Grid’s 572 page application includes “a Capacity Cost Recovery Provision tariff, which allows the Company to recover all incremental costs associated with the ANE Agreement, as well as the Company’s proposed financial incentive.” Understand that when National Grid says “financial incentives” they are talking about company profits.

The logic that National Grid is using to claim the right to tariffs is that the RIPUC has allowed such charges when it comes to “long-term renewable electricity for retail customers from wholesale power providers.” [emphasis added] In other words, because the government has taken an interest in expanding renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and allowed tariffs to support these efforts, National Grid argues that it should be allowed similar considerations for fossil fuels such as fracked gas.

National Grid owns a 20 percent stake in the ANE Project, so Rhode Islanders will be ensuring that the company generates a profit as they buy fracked gas from themselves if the RIPUC approves this request.

A similar tariff stalled in the Massachusetts legislature, where the state Senate unanimously rejected the idea but the session ended before a House vote. The Massachusetts Supreme Court is deciding on the validity of the tariff, since the Massachusetts PUC approved the idea.

National Grid also asked that their request be approved “as expeditiously as possible,” meaning that they want the decision fast tracked. As a result, the public comment meeting held last night at the RIPUC offices in Warwick was the first and last opportunity for public comment, unless RIPUC commissioners Margaret Curran and Herbert DeSimone III decide to hold another public comment meeting. (The third member of the RIPUC board, Marion Gold, has recused herself.) Written comment can be sent to thomas.kogut@dpuc.ri.gov. Mention that you are commenting on Docket No. 4627.

The first speaker of the night, Doug Gablinske of The Energy Council of New England (TEC-RI), was also the only speaker in favor of the idea. Gablinske called the project “a novel approach” and said that “it’s good for ratepayers, for employees, for employers and for business.”

From there, things went downhill pretty quickly.

Calling the tariff an “unprecedented charge” Priscilla De La Cruz of the People’s Power and Light called on the RIPUC to reject National Grid’s request. “Why should consumers take on the risk of a new, unnecessary gas pipeline?” De La Cruz maintained that the entire idea conflicts with the goals of the 2014 Resilient Rhode Island Act. (You can read De La Cruz’s full testimony here.)

Lynn Clark came down from Burrillville, wearing her “No New Power Plant” tee shirt to argue against the proposal. She said that allowing National Grid to pass the costs of their LNG project onto consumers adds “insult to injury” to everyone living in her part of the state.

Other states did comprehensive studies before considering pipeline tariffs, said Nick Katkevich of the FANG Collective, who has been fighting pipeline projects in and around Rhode Island for three years. Massachusetts and Maine have both produced studies that concluded that pipeline tariffs are a bad idea, said Katkevich. “It’s shameful that National Grid wants to have guaranteed profits as part of this,” said Katkevich. “They don’t care about people. They don’t care about people’s utility rates… if they did they wouldn’t put guaranteed profits in there.”

“No one wants these pipelines,” said Katkevich, “across the region people are resisting the first of the three Spectra expansions… There have been 240 people arrested as part of direct action in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.”

If you have an opinion on this project, you can send it to Luly.massaro@puc.ri.gov. Mention that you are commenting on Docket No. 4627.

Below find all the testimony from the hearing.

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016

With little notice, PVD City Council voting on controversial TSA Tuesday

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The Providence City Council has called a special meeting for Tuesday night and among the agenda items is tax stabilization agreements (TSAs) for 60 Valley Street, LLC and 166 Valley Street, LLC on behalf of the Rising Sun Mills Project. The ordinance is sponsored by Council President Luis Aponte. The details of the TSA can be found here.

The City Council unanimously rejected a similar TSA, for 100 Fountain St, in February, under intense public pressure. Aponte then said, given the city’s precarious economic situation, “It’s the right signal that the [Finance] Committee is sending to the public and to the [City] Council.”

The TSA being considered by the council notes that the “projects been suffered serious financial setbacks and hardships as a result of the collapse of the real estate and financial markets over the past several years” and hence a five year extension of TSAs granted in 2003 and 2006 is needed. In return, “the Project Owners of 166 Valley Street will make an additional investment of approximately $5 million which shall be used to convert approximately 85,000 square feet of the building from a single tenant space to multiple commercial spaces. This will assist in the Project Owners in attracting new tenants to the Project and will create new construction and potential permanent jobs at the Project Site.”

The amount of revenue Providence will lose in this deal is unclear.

Stop Tax Evasion in Providence (STEP) released a press release Monday claiming that that the Providence City Council leadership is failing taxpayers.

“You would think that the Council would be in no rush to go handing out more of these questionable extensions to projects that have already been paying very little taxes for 15 years, but you would be wrong,” says the STEP press release. “While the… promise of new spending and jobs from Rising Sun Mill owners would seem welcome, there are absolutely no safeguards to ensure they will invest what they say. Thus the city can be certain of neither jobs nor permitting revenue.”

The special city council meeting was announced on Friday, July 29, as big news stories broke, such as Representative John Carnevale deciding not to appeal the Providence Board of Canvassers decision that ended his re-election campaign and Attorney General Peter Kilmartin announcing the non-results of his 38 Studios investigation. Technically, the City Council went on break for August and was not due to reconvene until September 1.

As a result, this important meeting was almost missed.

The city council will also be awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts at this meeting, according to the agenda.

July 28, 2016July 28, 2016

Nuns on the Bus visit RI

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The Nuns on the Bus came to Providence Saturday night as part of a 13 state tour that ended at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. At each stop, the Nuns held meetings where concerned residents could share their concerns about a range of topics – including tax justice, living wages, family-friendly workplaces, access to democracy, healthcare, citizenship and housing. These meetings were held under the general title of “Mending the Gaps” and the discussion points and concerns from each meeting are to be delivered in Philadelphia.

The Nuns arrived at St. Michael’s Church in South Providence to the music of the Extraordinary Rendition Band and St. Michael’s own drummers.

During the discussions the Nuns learned about the obscene child poverty rates in Rhode Island, the criminality and disconnect of many of our elected leaders and our state’s support for the fossil fuel industry and the environmental racism such support entails. The meeting filled the basement of St. Michael’s.

From Providence the Nuns headed to Hartford, Scranton and Newark before arriving in Philly on July 26. You can follow their progress here.

July 27, 2016

CLF makes its case against need for Burrillville power plant at RIPUC hearing

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2016-07-26 PUC Burrillville 3026 — Robert Fagan

On the second day of the RI Public Utilities Commission (RIPUC)’s evidentiary hearing concerning Invenergy‘s proposed $700 million fracked gas and diesel oil burning power plant, to be located in Burrillville, Jerry Elmer of the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) presented his witnesses who argued that the power plant is not needed and that it’s effect on ratepayers would be negligible.

The CLF’s case is one of nuance, and much depends on the views of Commissioner Herbert DeSimone Jr. DeSimone is the one commissioner on the PUC board that did not recuse themself, and the one commissioner who will write the RIPUC’s advisory opinion to the Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB), the body ultimately responsible for deciding on the plant. Invenergy is making the case that since the proposed plant has already sold half its capacity in an energy futures market run by ISO-NE, the plant is by definition needed. This is the default position not only of Invenergy, but also of the RI Office of Energy Resources (OER) and the RIPUC, if the questioning from their attorneys at the hearing are any indication.

The CLF is maintaining that what ISO-NE did was purchase extra power, and if Invenergy’s plant is taken out, there will still be more than enough electricity on the grid to power all of New England. Also, going forward, as more and more renewables come on line, the need for the plant will go down, not increase. Unfortunately, ISO-NE is somewhat of a black box. Though they publish thousands of pages on how their energy auctions are run, figuring out why one plant’s energy was purchased and another was not is virtually impossible, and no one from ISO-NE was at the hearing to answer questions.

As for ratepayer savings, on the first day of the hearing Invenergy’s attorney Alan Shoer called his witnesses and made his case that the savings to ratepayers would be significant. On the stand, John Niland, director of development for Invenergy admitted that the $280 million number he gave to Burrillville residents earlier in the year was false, and that he knew it was false when he presented it. The true number was closer to $36 million in rate payer savings.

2016-07-26 PUC Burrillville 3031 — All lawyers at the bench for a huddle

The CLF’s witness, Christopher Stix, also ruled out the $280 million number, saying it took him one week after the ISO-NE auction results were published to perform his calculations that the actual savings ranged from between zero and $36 million. John Niland testified that Invenergy did not know this number when he falsely gave the $280 million figure to the audience in Burrillville seven weeks after the auction published its results.

It is up to DeSimone to decide whether or not a savings of between zero and $36 million to rate payers is worth the additional pollution, the despoilment of Burrillville’s pristine habitats and the continued dependency on fracked gas for our energy needs in New England for decades to come. It is worth noting that $280 million was a number too big to ignore, from an economic standpoint, where as zero to $36 million (which is a bell curve, the actual number may be closer to $20 million) is not nearly as tantalizing.

The CLF’s first witness, Robert Fagan, testified for a marathon five hours.

“We know now is that the Invenergy plant is not needed for electrical needs in New England,” said Fagan, and under cross examination he did not falter.

Getting through Fagan’s testimony required defining a host of terms and acronyms. ICR, LOLE, NERC, sloping versus vertical demand curves etc. were defined and discussed. It was very technical, but it served two functions. One, it established Fagan’s expertise, something Invenergy tried to call into question in pre-filed testimony, and two, it helped prove Fagan’s case that the proposed power plant was not necessary.

Though high-powered attorneys Alan Shoer and Jerry Elmer set the tone for the meeting, it’s most likely that RIPUC attorney Cynthia Wilson-Frias will have the most impact on Commissioner DeSimone’s advisory opinion, given that she will likely help author it and DeSimone can be expected to lean heavily on RIPUC’s in house legal expertise. Wilson-Frias asked pointed questions about the fact that Invenergy already sold some of its expected output to ISO-NE. She indicated that since the energy sold, it is by definition needed. Fagan countered this logic well, his entire testimony was in fact a rebuttal of sorts to this idea, so it comes down to how much weight Wilson-Frias gives Fagan’s views versus the more mainstream “free” market ideas favored by Invenergy.

The last day of the hearing is today, and unfortunately I will not be in attendance. I hope to get an update from Jerry Elmer after the hearing.

You can view the entire days proceedings below:

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