Tag: Iberdrola USA

It is the biggest milestone so far for the project that has been in the works for more than a year and drew support from Gov. Janet Mills in February after parties inked a 40-year benefits package worth $250 million. The three-member Maine Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to vote on the proposal in April. John Carroll, a CMP spokesman, said in a statement that the report “squarely addresses the questions that have been raised in the course of this proceeding,” and “confirms that the project will provide environmental and economic benefits for Maine.” Next month’s vote will come amid fervid grassroots opposition in western Maine and during the further permitting processes that are required. Mills’ hometown of Farmington voted against it overwhelmingly last week, joining eight other towns in opposing it and almost all of the more than 1,300 public comments filed with the commission on the proposal were in opposition. “There’s nothing in this report that changes the facts that this transmission corridor is a bad deal for Maine and it’s deeply unpopular,” said Sandra Howard, the director of Say NO to NECEC, an opposition group that uses the acronym for the project’s formal name. Former Republican Gov. Paul LePage also backed it. Threats to the project loom in the Legislature, where Rep. Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, the co-chair of the Legislature’s energy committee, has submitted a bill backed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers that would require every town along the corridor’s path to accept it by referendum before the utilities commission moves it forward. They start on Monday morning at the University of Maine at Farmington.

One of the project’s main opponents, an umbrella group called Stop the Corridor, is made up of environmental groups and corporations that have come together to stop the project. What is unusual — at least in Maine — is that for the past year or more they’ve been waging a very public campaign against the project, rather than just lobbying behind the scenes. They’re essentially running a political campaign without a candidate or a ballot question, and because of that they fall between the cracks of our campaign finance laws. That was made especially clear when one examined the campaign’s financing, which revealed that the donations came from Scott and his buddies. The money for the campaign could be coming from competing energy companies or other corporate interests that would benefit financially from killing the project. If that were the case, it would be worthwhile to know, just as we know that CMP and its parent company, Avangrid/Iberdrola, will make money from the line being built. Stop the Corridor isn’t the only group in Maine politics ducking transparency. But there’s nothing to keep the political nonprofits or groups like Stop the Corridor from being honest about the source of their funding. When a political consultant works for a political candidate, a campaign, a political party or a political action committee, we are able to see who they’re working for and exactly how much they get paid. When they engage in that kind of work, we can’t connect the dots between their corporate clients and their political ones — which can be vital information.