With the election in dead heat and candidate Dubie quite touchy over his sympathy for Entergy’s Vermont Yankee, it appears PSD Commissioner O’Brien has his back. It’s how many days until the election?
After down playing the latest tritium discovery at Vermont Yankee earlier this week (claiming it didn’t indicate anything “one way or another” and implying interest in safety concerns about the leak were political “it’s how many days until the election?”) the administration’s guardian of the public good David O’Brien is now choosing mostly to ignore commenting on a NRC report that says:
flaws in construction and housekeeping standards at the time the plant was built in the 1970s and a failure to check on the condition of buried pipes in the years that followed led to the tritium contamination in late 2009 and early 2010.Burlington Free Press
No longer suffering from his earlier dismissal of the political, he is jumping into the election going after gubernatorial candidate Peter Shumlin for a remark made saying a recent NRC report confirmed that the design of the plant was not state of the art at the time it was built and the legislature had done the correct thing voting 26-4 to retire the aging plant.
O’Brien (a Douglas political appointee and former banker/businessman) maintains Shumlin’s statement was
“irresponsible”and “He [Shumlin] is not qualified on this topic, and he doesn't know what is and what state of the art isn’t."
PSD Commissioner further claims that the leaks are being “dealt with properly” and Shumlin is only “stirring fears”.
Seems Dubie wants it both ways. He can play the fear card on a plan his own party was party to with regards to prisons and cutting costs…. but when it comes to nuclear waste contamination and the further poisoning of our environment (and VT’s politics) by out of state interests – there is nothing to be afraid of.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I work for the people of Vermont.
Let’s take a look at Dave O’Brien’s history.
Fresh off a gig as Executive Director of the Rutland Economic Development Corporation, where he testified in the Public Service Board against increased funding for Efficiency Vermont, Dave was appointed Commissioner of the Department of Public Service, where he continued to oppose increased funding for Efficiency Vermont.
Then he replaced Bill Steinhurst, one of the finest, most able public servants I have ever known, as director of regulated utility planning, with Jonathan Lesser, who had been the head economist of Green Mountain Power. Yes, that Green Mountain Power. The one that the Public Service Department regulates.
According to Vermont Business magazine:
http://findarticles.com/p/arti…
I was at a particularly bizarre meeting at which an efficiency advocate jokingly referred to Jon Lesser as “Darth Lesser” and O’Brien totally lost his temper, railing about how awful it is for someone to refer to him as “Darth”.
Still, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a public servant in Vermont demonstrate the level of cynicism displayed in O’Brien’s “how many days to the election?” comment. It really is a new low. Commissioners are appointed by the governor, but they’re supposed to protect the public.
If O’Brien wants to take a leave of absence while he works on Dubie’s campaign, I’m sure something could be worked out.