Something fishy is going on in Snohomish County and, once again, extreme “green” activists are involved. According to a recent report, a whistle blower complaint has led to an independent investigation into Snohomish County Public Utility District (PUD) and $16 million worth of no-bid contracts it granted, since 2011, to a Seattle-based company called 1Energy. 1Energy is involved in a clean energy project known as MESA (Modular Energy Storage Architecture). King 5 reports,
“1Energy was founded by David Kaplan…
“[The whistleblower] showed KING 5 four years worth of documents connected to the 1Energy contract. He said it shows outgoing PUD CEO and General Manager Steve Klein laid the foundation for the no-bid contracts, intellectual property arrangements and other important information connected to the project with one important utility employee, David Kaplan.
“Kaplan left Snohomish PUD two months before the company he started in 2010 won the no-bid contract in September 2011.
“‘Pre-negotiating a contract with an employee in the public space? It’s not ok,’ commented [the whistleblower], ‘Ethically, you have to know better than to negotiate a contract with your colleague and set him up three days after they leave.’”
Just to be clear, Kaplan started 1Energy while still a PUD employee. Records show he first incorporated his company in Delaware. He then registered the business in Washington State during the summer of 2010.
Email evidence also indicates that Kaplan and his supervisors at PUD negotiated most of the contract that would go to his future company while he was still working for the district. In fact, Kaplan was “part of the district’s executive team and reported directly to PUD CEO and General Manager Steve Klein.” Klein retired as CEO and General Manager of PUD last month.
But, that’s not where the fishiness ends. Top officials from the state Department of Commerce also went to work for 1Energy shortly before Commerce awarded Snohomish PUD a whopping $7.3 million to help pay for the work done by… 1Energy. Rogers Weed, who was the director of Commerce from 2009 until early 2013, in now one of Energy1’s vice presidents. The other vice president is Daniel Malarkey, who was deputy director under Weed. The Everett Herald points out that Kaplan himself was a contractor for Commerce from April 2009 until March 2010.
Last month, the PUD’s commissioners “decided to put on hold a new contract with 1Energy worth as much as $3.8 million.”
As could be expected, Jay Inslee has ties to the scandal. In 2014, Inslee was proud to highlight the PUD’s $7.3 million in “clean energy fund smart grid grants.” That’s the same $7.3 million earmarked for various projects associated with 1Energy.
This isn’t the first—and it certainly will not be the last—green scandal with Inslee’s fingerprints on it. As Shift reported, the same corrupt extreme green organizations involved in the scandal that brought down disgraced former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber are operational in Inslee’s administration.
Shift will keep you updated on this story as it develops.
Photo via King 5.
