Today, Spotlight PA ran an excellent story on how “local governments can struggle to work together in Pennsylvania even when they have a common and seemingly mundane goal like saving money on electric bills.” I’ve written about this project here pretty extensively. In the next month, ten local governments will vote to adopt affordable, carbon-free, Pennsylvania-supplied solar power.
I feel a lot of this article from the project’s inside. It’s complex. Communicating effectively through the complexity is a challenge. Its novelty makes this even harder.
I appreciate Tom Murphy’s observations. He is the solar adviser for the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors. He notes that local governments avoid energy agreements like this for obvious reasons: they move into the unknown and require attention to tedium and lots of details. Who knows what you will bump into? Murphy says, “It’s not just hiring an attorney, but it’s hiring an attorney that’s experienced in that space. … And here we are trying to put together a cooperative type of a purchase and then power purchase agreements on top of all that. You just have multiple levels of complexity in there to navigate through.”
Murphy also says we are early movers. Truth. “This endeavor, at least in regards to the [cooperation] of multiple municipal entities, is a first of its kind in Pennsylvania as best we know,” said Amy Bader, president of the State College Area School District Board of Directors. As trailblazers, Murphy says other governments will be looking to us “to figure out what that might look like going forward.” We definitely have a lot of lessons. There is a reason we were recognized early on as part of the American Cities Climate Challenge. If we do things right and show others how we did it, they can do it, too.
Take a few minutes and read Min Xian’s “Routine process or ‘financial scandal’? Legal bills divide some elected officials involved in Pa. county solar project.”
Peter Walks for Democracy 
Thank you, Peter, for never giving up – and in the midst of all of this, thank you for doing what you can to help Meghan!! I wish I could clone you… we need more such people in the world Joan “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justice now. Love mercy now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.” The Talmud
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Thanks, Joan! This project requires focus, heart, and attention to the process. Knowing how interested you are, I am going to provide some extra details here.
We knew it would be difficult. That is why I supported getting an energy services consultant at the get go. Luckily, we have had a renewable energy professional (no ties to the project) in the working group and project management team who understood this necessity. Altogether, the working group recognized specialized legal counsel would be required.
Legal counsel is not free. And the nature of this energy work for 10+ local governments is expensive. But it seems more expensive because most of us aren’t used to paying attention to legal bills from our local governments. We just accept it as the cost of doing business and bake it into our budgets.
I don’t blame some elected officials for the sticker shock that came late this summer: $360k to an energy lawyer is not nothing. But it’s all to manage risk, to ensure we have that low price locked in for 15 years, and that we are doing our part to add zero carbon electricity generation to the grid and play a role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Then there are some out there like Portney and Moser who are just manufacturing a controversy about these legal bills. Both of them are pole-vaulting over anthills: Moser about a $7,000 check for legal services and Portney about decisions he wasn’t present for but trying to make into something. The Centre County commissioners and their solicitor, Betsy DuPuis have no issue with the $7,000 check. Moser, Portney, and Tor “Michaels” McCartney do. Portney continues to try to drum up some kind of bad process about the lawyer’s selection. It was done in January 2023 and reported in the Working Group’s minutes from that same month. Our staff have also kept track of the legal engagements and costs.
I believe in doing hard things that are worth doing. This project is totally worth it. When we are all said and done, the staff and I will create a guide book on the process and share it as widely as we can. The naysayers will have only their cheap knockoff version of using the tobacco industry playbook to kill the project, an effort that will fail.
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