Charles County Board of Commissioners President F. Wayne Cooper mis-represented, to The Bay Net, the Board’s interaction with Maryland’s Public Services Commission regarding the Mirant Mid-Atlantic Morgantown power generating station expansion project.
On Monday, The Bay Net spoke with Cooper. We wanted to better understand the Board’s seeming lack of involvement with Mirant’s project.
In order to comply with Maryland’s Healthy Air Act of 2006, the Morgantown power plant must clean up its emissions. No one The Bay Net has spoken to is unhappy about the prospect of cleaner air. However, in the interest of cost-effectiveness the options Mirant has chosen to deliver the cleaner emissions puts other precious local resources at risk.
Previous statements from Commissioner Cooper to the media indicated that the Board did not send an opinion because they were not asked for one. The Bay Net had witnessed the Board send opinions to various State and Federal agencies regarding other major county issues, like the 301 Bypass. We had a difficult time understanding why the commissioners wouldn’t try to be involved in a local project using local resources, with or without invitation.
By way of explanation, Commissioner Cooper (see original article) told the Bay Net that the State had indeed not asked the Board for input on the matter. It seemed, from our conversation with the commissioner, that the State, for reasons of its own, had run roughshod over the county’s right to participate in decisions affecting its constituents.
However, after the article went live many Bay Net readers, who knew more about researching government documents than our fledgling reporters, sent us a link to the PSC’s online document files. They had unearthed a 30 January 2007 letter from then acting County Administrator, Roy Hancock to the PSC on behalf of the Board of Commissioners.
The letter (available below) declines the PSC’s invitation (see above) to participate in the public hearing of Mirant’s plans for its Morgantown plant. In declining to participate, the commissioners not only expressed disinterest in sitting in on the hearing, but also waived their right (according to MD Public Utilities Code 7-207) to hold the hearing jointly with the PSC.
In other words, they gave up their right to question, on behalf of their constituents, those entities and individuals giving testimony at the hearing. They had the legal right and ability to insist that those testifying explain the material thoroughly and answer the commissioners’ questions about anything unclear. Not only did they waive that right, but the letter bore only the signature of Mr. Hancock, not the usual five commissioners’ signatures affixed to important correspondence.
This evening, Commissioner Cooper reiterated how unqualified the Board felt to offer an opinion on Mirant’s proposed emissions cleaning methods.
“On this one we felt as though it was completely out of our league. We really were relying on the State to make a good decision,” the commissioner explained. He told The Bay Net that they felt uncomfortable at the prospect of holding a joint hearing when they knew so little about the subject. He felt the manner of the State’s invitation wasn’t
