Louisiana Voice

To paraphrase Archie Bunker in the opening theme song to All in the Family:

Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover William Proxmire again.

William Proxmire, for those too young to remember, was a Democratic senator from Wisconsin who first won the seat vacated by the death of demagogue Joe McCarthy in 1957 and who was reelected five times: in 1958, 1964, 1970, 1976 and 1982 by wide margins, including 71 percent of the vote in 1970, 73 percent in 1976 and 65 percent in 1982.

But here’s the real kicker: An early advocate of campaign finance reform, he refused contributions outright and spent less than $200 – of his own money – to cover filing fees and returning unsolicited contributions in each of his final two campaigns. Moreover, during his entire tenure in the Senate – 31 years – he refused to accept reimbursements for travel expenses related to his official duties.

He still holds the U.S. Senate record for consecutive roll call votes cast: 10,252 between April 20, 1966, and Oct. 18, 1988.

But he is best remembered for his dreaded Golden Fleece Award, given monthly between 1975 and 1988 as a means to focus attention on self-serving and wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars. Winners of his awards included the U.S. Department of Defense, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service.

His very first award was to the National Science Foundation for funding an $84,000 study on why people fall in love. The U.S. Justice Department got one for its study on why prisoners wanted to get out of jail. Another went to the Institute of Mental Health for its study of a Peruvian brothel (researchers said they made repeat trips to the establishment in the interest of accuracy, according to a New York Times story about that award). The Federal Aviation Administration got an award for its study of “the physical measurements of 432 airline stewardesses (now called flight attendants), with special attention given to the “length of the buttocks.”

All this is to say that we could indeed use a man like William Proxmire again.

Especially in Louisiana.

And he could start with the Louisiana Public Service Commission.

Every joke needs a setup before the punchline and the setup for the PSC is its administration of something called the Energy Efficiency Program.

The setup goes something like this:

Would you spend say, $10,000 on something to save you money if you knew it would only save you $6,700 over a 10-year period? If you’re confused by math, that would mean you’d actually be losing $3,300 over those 10 years. It’s kind of like spotting someone selling gasoline for $1.50 per gallon but you have a full tank that you paid $1.85 per gallon for, so you drive around until your tank is empty so you can fill up with the cheaper gas, convinced that you’ve saved 35 cents per gallon.

Well, that’s precisely what the PSC has been doing with the money you spend on electricity and gas for the past four years.

And the PSC is doing this, in large part, in partnership with a firm run by a business associate of a member of the PSC, one Eric Skrmetta who, coincidentally, is up for reelection in a couple of weeks.

Between 2017 and 2019 (figures for this year aren’t available), the PSC awarded $17.3 million in customer money (your money, remember?) to an outfit called Brilliant Efficiencies, an energy efficiency company founded by Jason Hewitt in 2013.

Hewitt had no discernable experience in energy efficiency prior to that time but he did have a business relationship with Skrmetta, which is just as valuable in Louisiana.

You see, among Hewitt’s other life skills is his background as a movie producer of sorts and he also has owned Films in Motion since 2005.

And Skrmetta? Besides being an attorney who dabbles in gaming casinos, he also …well, he also writes movie scripts.

And it just happens that Hewitt and Skrmetta are co-executive producers of a proposed animated television series called PINKAPOTAMUS. And Skrmetta has written at least one episode and Hewitt has directed at least one episode.

Besides Pinkapotamus, Hewitt’s company is also producing two other projects for Skrmetta – Devil’s Brigade and Snow Unicorn.

So, it has to make you wonder how Hewitt’s new energy efficiency company managed to swing nine of the first 10 contracts in 2017, the program’s first year, yes?

Those nine contracts were for a total of $5.3 million and called for implementing energy cost savings for entities like the Jefferson Parish Department of Safety, the City of Baker, the City of Zachary, the City of Gonzales, Southern University, the City of Eunice, the Baton Rouge Recreation Dept. (BREC), the Pointe Coupee Parish School Board and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Dept.

But here’s the punchline, and the joke’s on us, the taxpayers: With the exception of the Pointe Coupee School Board and the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Dept., there were no real energy cost savings. None. Zilch. In fact, for the total expenditure of that $5.3 million, projections call for a total savings of $3.6 million over the first 10 years. That’s a shortfall of some $1.7 million.

And the really big yuk is that there will be no savings for even longer times:

The Jefferson Parish Dept. of Safety will require 28 years just to break even. Others are the City of Baker (18.5 years), Zachary (18.25 years), Gonzales (14 years), Southern University (13.1 years), BREC (10.8 years). A 10-year payback period is the benchmark generally used by the energy efficiency industry to determine whether a project is an effective use of customer money, according to a story published by the ENERGY AND POLICY INSTITUTE.

It gets better.

Brilliant Efficiencies was awarded 50 of the 89 total contracts during the programs first three years (2017-2019) and 27 of those 50 failed to produce any savings in the first 10 years. In fact three of the projects awarded to Hewitt’s company had paybacks of 60 years or longer and one project at Grambling State University that called for nearly half-a-million dollars in lighting and HVAC upgrades was projected to have a payback period of a whopping 114 years, far beyond the life expectancy of the so-called upgrade.

By contrast, another company, M&M Contractors, received six projects, four of which were projected to pay for themselves in fewer than five years.

PSC Commissioner Foster Campbell said that when he began requiring competitive bids on projects in his North Louisiana district, he found that Brilliant Efficiencies bids were, on average, 54 percent higher than bids by other companies and in one case, was 80 percent higher than the low bid. Hewitt’s company got none of the contracts bid on in Campbell’s district, he said.

Sixteen of the 50 contracts awarded to Brilliant Efficiencies totaling $6.1 million were awarded in Skrmetta’s PSC district and would have been approved by him.

The energy efficiency program is paid for from a fee charged customers for “lost revenue” incurred by utility companies from any energy savings realized by the projects but incredibly, industrial customers were allowed to opt out from contributing to any of the costs of the projects. At least 83 of Entergy’s industrial customers did so, leaving residential and small business customers to reimburse the utilities for the value of any saved energy.

The Louisiana PSC in December 2016, ripped 50 percent of the program’s budget intended for residential and small commercial customers and reallocated the money for school districts, local governments and state agencies. The commission’s vote removed administrative oversight by third-party energy efficiency program administrators, giving authority for approval of projects directly to commission members, clearing the way for members like Skrmetta to approve no-bid contracts for business associates like Hewitt.

Abrupt agenda changes with little or no advance notice further roiled the picture as the program swung into high gear in May 2017. Two filings that month gave scant time for energy efficiency contractors to put proposals together in order to apply for the lucrative grants. Published on May 15 of that year, the guidelines simultaneously established a deadline for applications as…May 15, 2017.

The PSC claimed on May 24 that it had erred in setting the deadline as the same date as the guidelines publication and reset the deadline for applications as June 15, barely three weeks for bids to be submitted. A company owned by say, a business partner of a commission member, might conceivably have a leg up on the competition in such a scenario, especially given the fact that commission members were given wide latitude in determining who got the grants.

When PSC staff recommended in November 2019 that the program be discontinued, it was Skrmetta who made the motion to continue the program. Commissioner Lambert Boissiere, III protested that he had just received details of Skrmetta’s motion the day of the vote, saying that the PSC once had “a courtesy where the documents like this would be circulated several days in advance.” Campbell likewise said he didn’t like the appearance of Skrmetta’s move. Theirs were the only dissenting votes.

And just to take the entire matter from questionable to outright absurd, consider this:

Skrmetta’s executive assistant Adrie de Waal was assigned by him to conduct inspections of some of the projects in his district despite her having zero background in energy auditing and despite the failure of her name to come up in a search of professional engineers licensed to do business in Louisiana.

One of those inspections was of a 250-ton cooling tower for the Pontchartrain Center that cost Louisiana Entergy customers more than $300,000 with an estimated payback in savings of 24 years.

Yep, Louisiana could use someone like William Proxmire. But we do have John Kennedy and Clay Higgins.