Before Dean's Presidential Campaign became "People Powered" it was financed by Energy Companies. Without their money noone would have ever heard of Dean.
Remember, one year ago Dean's views on Affirmative Action, Social Security, Right To Sue HMO's was 180 degrees from where he is now.
Dean fought for Energy DeRegulation using a flawed model that had already failed in Quebec. He was only stopped because Vermont's Legislature stood up against him.
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Dean raises money from energy sources
February 27, 2002
By David Gram
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MONTPELIER — When Gov. Howard Dean wanted to raise money for a possible presidential bid, he followed the example of a former governor of Texas and called on his friends in the energy industry.
Nearly a fifth of the roughly $111,000 collected in its first months by Dean’s presidential political action committee, the Fund for a Healthy America, came from people with ties to Vermont’s electric utilities, according to a recent Federal Elections Commission filing.
It should be no surprise. Dean and utility executives have had a long and friendly relationship.
One donor who gave Dean’s PAC the maximum amount allowed — $5,000 — said he did so because he and his wife “agree with many of the things the fund is talking about — fiscal conservatism, education, health care.”
That donor is Robert Young of Proctor, who also is a top official at two utility companies that have had a lot of important business before state government during Dean’s nearly 11 years in office. Young is chief executive at Central Vermont Public Service Corp. and chairman of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp.
A top Dean aide emphatically denied that the governor has ever let campaign contributions influence state policy. Kate O’Connor, secretary of civil and military affairs, used the word absurd to describe that notion more than a half-dozen times in a recent interview.
But the governor himself has said the donations buy access. “People who think they’re going to buy a contract or buy some influence are mistaken,” Dean famously said during the debate over a campaign finance reform bill in 1996. “But they do get access — there’s no question about that. ...They get me to return their phone calls.”
Advocates of public financing for campaigns complain about the message conveyed by the contributions.
“Administration actions going back some years betray an inappropriate coziness with the utilities,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Service Research Group. “I am not prepared to say it’s a result of contributions given. But these contributions present the appearance of impropriety or appearance of influence that it probably would have been better to avoid.”
Dean’s close relationship with utility representatives dates back to the day he became governor in 1991. A lobbyist for Green Mountain Power and a GMP employee were among the first people Dean called in to help his transition.
A list of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers includes Green Mountain Power Corp.’s chairman, two company board members and a vice president, all of whom made donations to the Fund For A Healthy America. It also includes two longtime utility lobbyists.
Over the years, the governor has sided with the utilities on many of the most pressing issues, including the push for deregulation of the electric industry, and later backing away from that as a goal. Among other major decisions:
— After years of pushing for the companies to absorb the excess costs of their expensive contract with Hydro-Quebec, Dean’s Department of Public Service agreed to let ratepayers be billed for more than 90 percent of what those excess costs are expected to be in the coming years. The extra costs will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
— The department also agreed to allow the utilities to sell Vermont Yankee to a Pennsylvania company for a price that was expected to be $23.8 million by the time the deal closed. Shortly before the Public Service Board was to make a final decision on that sale, another company stepped in and offered more than seven times as much. That sale to Entergy Nuclear Corp. is currently before the board.
— After it became clear in the late 1990s that selling Vermont Yankee was a top goal of the utilities, the administration failed to heed warnings for more than two years that the money the nuclear plant was paying for emergency planning was much less than was needed. An administration official said there was concern about interfering with the sale.
“The Dean administration knew explicitly (about the worries about emergency preparedness) and deliberately didn’t do anything about it in order to help CV and GMP sell the plant,” said James Dumont, a lawyer for the New England Coalition On Nuclear Pollution. “They didn’t bite the hand that fed them.”
Dumont contended that while the campaign contributions have helped utility executives gain access to the governor, others have been cut out.
“There’s been a one-sided flow of information to the governor’s office about utility matters,” he said.
Tony Gierzynski, a political science professor at the University of Vermont and author of a book on campaign finance called “Money Rules,” said, “There’s a great imbalance in the system between those who have money and those who don’t.”
http://timesargus.nybor.com/Legislature/Story/43125.html
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