Background
Complaint and initial investigation
A Bedford citizen contacted the Watchdog in March 2023, alleging that “hundreds” (there were actually thousands) of solar panels had been sitting next to the prison since 2018; that there was both pilferage and deterioration of the metal frames; and that the Bedford County commissioners had misled the public on exactly why the project had stalled.
The Watchdog began investigating. Here’s what we found before obtaining any records from the county:
- In 2017, a company called RER Energy Group convinced the Bedford County Commissioners that they could save the County up to $5.3 million in electricity costs over five years by sponsoring a $3.3 million solar power array next to the Bedford County Correctional facility. More than 5,000 high-end solar panels would power various government buildings, including the prison and courthouse. The company would own the array and sell the electricity to the County at a net cheaper rate than it paid to the Bedford Rural Electric Co-op (BREC). According to RER Energy, BREC would be compelled to reimburse the County for excess power delivered into the grid at retail prices.
- A 25-year agreement with RER called for the County to support a $900,000 grant from the state Commonwealth Financing Authority (CFA). After some initial skepticism, the CFA issued the grant, which RER (using a shell company called Bedford 58 Solar LLC,) used to purchase the panels in the Fall of 2018. At the same time, in Bedford Borough, another $870,000 in CFA grant money was issued for an RER Energy solar project next to the water treatment plant.
- The panels for the County project were delivered to the prison in November 2018, and the following month a groundbreaking ceremony was held on the site, attended by State Senator Wayne Langerholc, State Representative Jesse Topper, the Dept. of Environmental Protection Deputy Secretary Ramez Ziadeh, state Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary Dennis Davin, and all three Bedford county Commissioners. “These dollars saved will be essential in operating and managing these types of facilities without requiring tax increases for local residents,” Davin told reporters. “That’s what we’re doing here — that’s what this is all about.”
- Four years later, the stacks of uninstalled panels lay corroding in the same field next to the prison, small trees growing between them, with tell-tale voids where stacks worth many thousands of dollars had disappeared.
The Watchdog also discovered that
a) CFA money had been disbursed to RER Energy in 2018, but there had been no state follow-up two years after the initial project deadline and
b) a second solar project involving Bedford Borough, RER Energy and $870,000 in CFA financing had also languished.
Bedford Borough officials were reasonably forthcoming at this point that the second project had collapsed, but County officials never returned our calls and emails. In April 2022, the Watchdog issued a press release revealing what we knew at the time, and then file an detailed Right-to-Know request with Bedford County (a separate RTK was filed with Bedford Borough). The County stonewalled our request — marking the beginning of long and complicated litigation — until after the Watchdog filed an appeal with the Office of Open Records.
What really happened
The public records ultimately extracted from the County revealed that the County and Borough Solar Projects had been predicated on deception, sloppy planning and wishful thinking, both at the company and in government. While Bedford Borough cut its losses early on, Bedford County did not.
It was entirely clear to the County by March 2019 that the project could never materialize as planned. RER Energy was dead wrong about BREC’s obligations to reimburse the County for surplus energy fed into the grid, meaning the numbers just didn’t work. The commissioners, led by Barry Dallara, then secretly authorized desperate and wholly spurious litigation against BREC at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC), in hopes of either forcing the utility to surrender its service purview to Penelec — which the County apparently felt might be more accommodating — or to agree to pay contrived reimbursement rates that would foist losses totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars onto the Co-op.
Worse yet, the commissioners apparently allowed RER Energy President Jim Kurtz to conduct the litigation — ultimately abandoned — in the name of Bedford County without issuing him any formal power of attorney. Our RTK request revealed a signed agreement in which a San Francisco based law firm (Keyes & Fox LLP) was hired at up to $825/hr to sue BREC, the litigation to be paid for by RER Energy, but with Bedford County as the plaintiff. The document was signed by Kurtz “on behalf of Bedford County”.
Strangely, the agreement also specified that the invoices would be sent to Bedford County, but be paid for by RER Energy. The County never produced a power of attorney, denied any such authorizing document existed, never offered an explanation for how Kurtz was empowered to act on behalf of the people of Bedford County, and never produced any invoices for the litigation.
When the Watchdog first broke the solar story to local media in April 2022, Commissioner Dallara responded with what we later determined to be outright lies. “In 2019, COVID came out of nowhere and stopped everything for almost two years,” Dallara told the Altoona Mirror. He blamed “supply-chain issues” (like COVID-19, also non-existent in 2019), inflation and the Department of Environmental Protection for the delays, but vowed that the project would be completed within “seven to ten months”. (Dallara was expressing a very different opinion in a February 28, 2022 email to RER Energy’s Jim Kurtz. Proof of what had really doomed the project was disclosed in an RER Energy memo to the CFA, dated February 18, 2020, requesting an extension of time to June 30, 2021 due to the impending litigation.)
Dallara, speaking to the Mirror on April 6, 2022, offered no disclosure of the rate dispute with BREC, made no mention of the failed PUC litigation, and misled the Mirror reporter to believe that the project was delayed but still on track. A week later, the Mirror reported that the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED — which administers CFA grants) had extended the deadline for project completion to June 2023, presumably after a request from Barry Dallara. The project, of course, was already dead.
In March 2023 the Mirror finally reported that the solar project was “scrapped” and that the Bedford Commissioners had told RER Energy to remove the solar panels from the prison field. The panels disappeared sometime in mid-June, 2023. Neither the Mirror nor the Bedford Gazette ever reported anything about the real reasons for the failure of the project or the PUC litigation against the Co-op, even though the Watchdog shared its findings with both papers.
The RTK Request (04/07/2022)
The Watchdog submitted a carefully crafted RTK request on April 4, 2023.
Interaction with Bedford County’s Open Records Officer
Bedford County’s official response to our RTK request, dated May 3, 2022 and sent May 5, 2022, was evasive and misleading . Open Records Officer Debra Brown had invoked a 30-day extension in April, which is lawful and expected for such a broadly worded request. But her initial response included only five documents (see Record Response 1, below), none of them enlightening, without a shred of internal communication and with no reference at all to the CFA grant, though she did say that “I have been having problems pulling everything together and need at least an additional week to see if there is additional information pertaining to your request on the solar system.” In the same May 3 letter, however, she also stated “Please be advised that this correspondence will serve to close this record with our office as permitted by law.”
Unfortunately for Ms. Brown, the Watchdog knew that there was a vast quantity of public records pertaining to the project held by the County. Not only had we discovered the botched PUC litigation, which the County had never made public, we also had access to a large cache of internal emails leaked to us from a source inside government (available here).
The Watchdog notified Ms. Brown on May 11, 2022 that her initial response was “clearly insufficient and could not possibly bear scrutiny,” and that we would initiate litigation in the Office of Open Records if the County continued to withhold the public records it was mandated by law to release. Hearing no reply, we sent a more strongly worded note on May 16, 2022, informing her that litigation was imminent. Ms. Brown responded the same day the same five documents she’d sent previous, with the note “this information was sent to Bryan King (the Watchdog’s public affairs officer) on May 5, 2022”, to which the Watchdog replied that it would proceed to the Office of Open Records. Ms. Brown sent another reply, stating “I am finishing up information to send to you.” Later the same day, she sent us one additional document, a land development agreement.
It was not until after the Watchdog filed an appeal with the Office of Open Records that the County — days after the response deadline issued by the OOR — finally released most (but not all) of the public records pertaining to the solar project. Included in the dump were seven large batches of emails, some contractual documents and invoices. What it did not include was any documentation showing how RER Energy was granted power of attorney to litigate on behalf of Bedford County against the Bedford Rural Electric Co-op.
Litigation between the Watchdog and Bedford County continues.
Record Response 1
Record Response 2
At a later date, Bedford county XXX
Appeal to the Office of Open Records
Jump link to litigation page following OOR appeal file preview.
Final Responsive Records
Continue with responsive records provided as a result of OOR appeal (combined).
