June 14, 2015
Massachusetts, Opinions

Massachusetts Clean Energy Center: dirty state quasi-public agency

Mass Clean Energy Center - A Dirty State Quasi-Public Agency | Falmouth Wind Turbines Ties Up Culture of Corruption In Massachusetts | Out of the Shadows Masschusetts Clean Energy Center - A Dirty State Agency? | By Frank Haggerty (Open Post) | Falmouth Patch | June 13, 2015 | patch.com

The wind power experiment in Falmouth has been an unmitigated failure. The turbines have taken the health, property rights and tax resources from the towns residents as litigation cases over the turbines are lined up out the front door of Falmouth Town Hall.

Let’s follow the money. Lets hope the Massachusetts Attorney General and US District Attorney can read along

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative a state quasi-public agency aka renamed the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center helped Governor Patrick stash 27 million dollars. As an investigation unfolds we will find this is the tip of the iceberg.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative changed its name to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center after they sold several embarrassing megawatt commercial wind turbines from Vestas wind turbine company with Massachusetts electric rate payers renewable energy tax money. A small hidden tax on all Massachusetts rate payers electric bills was supposed to go to the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to advance renewable energy.

The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative aka the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center sold the Vestas Wind 1 wind turbine to the Town of Falmouth after Massachusetts taxpayers already paid for it the first time. That’s not all ! The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, MassCEC had to bribe town officials with one million dollars of taxpayer funds just for local town officials to take the embarrassing turbine.

New media sources are reporting that the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center a state quasi-public agency helped former Governor Patrick fund around the world travels that could run as high as 30 million dollars. The state quasi-public agency is an agency that gets state and federal dollars including arranging to build the Falmouth wind turbines with federal stimulus money.

The Town of Falmouth and state officials to this day will not say if 6 million dollars used to build the Falmouth wind turbines was a grant or a loan. Now taxpayers find that if the 6 million was a loan it was to pay for an orchestrated plan to get the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to pay for Governor Patrick and his around the world trips at taxpayer expense.

Alarm bells should have gone off as soon as Falmouth town officials couldn’t explain if 6 million dollars of federal stimulus funds was a loan or a grant. This is an example of the good old boy network in Massachusetts looking the other way. The good old boy network includes the main stream media who refuse to upset their comrades in arms stealing valuable infrastructure money.

The bottom line here is all the money going into the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center was supposed to be for the advancement of renewable energy.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has along history of making what they call “ mistakes. “ In Mattapoisett the agency prepared a 23 page wind siting report that contained massive errors and omissions caught by local residents. The MassCEC said they were mistakes and dropped all plans to build wind turbines in Mattapoisett.

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center went on to Falmouth dropping the noise reference to human annoyance found in the previous report in Mattapoisett and now admits it made “ mistakes “ in the acoustical noise studies in Falmouth.

Recently it was disclosed that the turbines owned by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center had warnings on them that they produce 110 decibels of noise which is twice the specifications. They knew this prior to any Falmouth installations.

The latest debacle is the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center using 1.8 million in taxpayer dollars to help finance the Town of Falmouth to hire multiple law firms and attorneys to fight their own residents over the poor placement of commercial wind turbines with no permits.

Folks,

In June 2009, former Speaker of the House Sal DiMasi was indicted for allegedly taking $57,000 in kickbacks in a plan to steer government contracts to a software company.

Sal DiMasi was the father of the Massachusetts Green Communities Act

Former Governor Patrick admitted he used a fake email name of “Sally Reynolds” at the trial.

Massachusetts politicians have enjoyed immunity in exchange for their testimony at the expense of the taxpayers.

Today we know as much as 40 million dollars was moved from state quasi-public agencies like the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center into Governor Patrick and his off-budget accounts.

Since 2010 concerned citizens have been asking the state to revue the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. The agency has grown so large full of political hacks our politicians refuse to act.

Our only hope is the Massachusetts Trial Court composed of seven court departments with unique jurisdictions and responsibilities. The goal of the strategic plan is to achieve the delivery of justice with dignity and speed.

Note # This below here added worth reading about Massachusetts Quasi-Public Agencies :

Out of the Shadows Massachusetts Quasi-Public Agencies and the Need for Budget Transparency

Quasi-public agencies are independent governmental corporations that are created through enabling legislation to perform a particular service or set of public functions. They are technically public entities and often exercise public powers; but they remain relatively independent of the government that founded them. The directors of these agencies, who are usually appointed for extended periods, are empowered to make operational decisions independent of the legislature

http://www.uspirgedfund.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Out-of-the-Shadows.pdf

Credit : Deirdre Cummings, MASSPIRG Education Fund Phineas Baxandall, Ph.D., U.S. PIRG Education Fund Kari Wohlschlegel, Frontier Group


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2015/06/14/massachusetts-clean-energy-center-dirty-state-quasi-public-agency/