Providing a reliable, plentiful, and reasonably priced supply of electricity into the future continues to elude our leaders.
Connecticut’s unlucky location at the end of supply lines and our lack of natural resources require a governor and the best people he can find to devote themselves to nimble innovation. And now a scandal has intensified the urgency of that task and handed Gov. Ned Lamont a daunting list of imperatives to accomplish.
The imploding Public Utilities Regulatory Agency demands immediate repair. Lamont mistakenly believed he had the right energy team at PURA with Marissa Gillett as its chair. A stupid inaccuracy about internal procedures brought Gillett down seven months after she emphatically asserted it under oath at her February confirmation hearing for another term.
Gillett insisted the agency had not limited her two fellow commissioners’ access to PURA’s staff. When a message Gillett and her people insisted never existed was found on September 17, the agency was required to provide it to The Courant’s Edmund Mahony in response to a request for documents under the state’s open records law.
That landmine dressed up as an email caused an uproar that silenced Gillett’s claque of followers in the legislature. Her resignation followed, but only hers. Lamont must quickly find a replacement for Gillett and another PURA commissioner.
The governor should find a new chair for PURA before Gillette leaves on October 12. Lamont has allowed two seats on PURA to remain vacant since they were created by the legislature six years ago. This was a mistake. A couple of forceful commissioners might have saved Gillett from herself, ratepayers from months of wasted time, and Lamont from a colossal embarrassment.
Only the governor can replace PURA commissioners, and he should also find one to take the place of Michael Caron, a former Republican legislator whose renomination has been dangling in the political ether for months. Caron was one of the two commissioners denied direct access to the agency’s staff members. We know Caron knew about the policy because a year ago he and a colleague who has since retired, Jack Betkowski, complained about it in a meeting with House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Haven. Candelora asked Gillett the fatal question about the staff access policy at her February confirmation hearing because he’d learned of it from Caron and Betkowski.
Gillett’s confirmation hearing drew more interest, attention, and testimony than any nomination has in years. Caron had to have been aware of it because he was keenly sensitive to his own position on the commission, hoping Lamont would appoint him to another term in his $151,000 a year job.
Gillett enjoyed considerable influence with Lamont, Caron none. Contradicting Gillett’s testimony as she headed to a personal win at the legislature might have made Caron a target. The decisive message disappeared from PURA’s email system, as records seem to do with unnerving frequency at the agency. Caron, however, possessed a printed copy. Still, he apparently remained silent.
Margaret Thatcher, one of freedom’s indomitable friends, mused that when she left office, she might start a business and call it “Rent-a-Spine.” Eleven and half years as Britain’s prime minister and she never ceased to be astonished at how timid her colleagues could be in the face of obstacles. Caron might have put his own interests at risk if he’d said what he knew in the face of Gillett’s testimony, so he apparently said nothing for seven months.
Putting energy policy right will have a profound impact on Connecticut’s ability to shape a prosperous future in the age of electrification. Only difficult decisions await PURA and others in our energy rubric. Making some–ratepayers, utilities, legislators and the governor–unhappy at times is part of the job. A position on PURA was never intended to be a lifelong sinecure.
The new head of PURA will be doomed by choosing to avoid making significant changes inside the agency, starting with the agency’s chief of staff, Theresa Govert. Records show the decision to limit the commissioners’ access to the staff came after wide consultations within PURA with Govert. The new policy was not a secret. Why did so many agency employees say nothing? PURA will never fulfill its responsibilities if a chunk of its upper management is devoted to ceaseless maneuvering to accumulate power for themselves at the expense of others.
Some months can seem like each headache is interrupted by a worse one in the state’s scramble to keep power flowing, so let’s not ignore some good news.
Lamont finally got a break from months of fruitless trouble in energy policy. A federal judge blocked a malicious Trump administration order that halted construction of the nearly completed offshore wind project that will provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes in Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The Revolution Wind project relies on specialized ships to take the enormous blades that are central to creating renewable electricity from the port in New London to the construction site. Those essential ships are few and tightly scheduled. The ones working here will soon leave for another project.
An extended construction delay put at risk a significant boost to Connecticut’s electricity supply. Last week’s victory should provide enough time to finish the project before the Trump administration, oddly obsessed with wrecking clean energy generators, can devise a new attack on the building of a diverse, clean supply of power.
A catastrophe avoided counts as a win in the turbulence buffeting us this year.
Reach Kevin Rennie at kevinfrennie@courant.com