FROM A PRESS RELEASE OBTAINED FROM THE CHARLOTTE DENNETT FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL CAMPAIGN
Date: October 29, 2010
Contact: Kristina Borjesson
Tel: 802 644-5898
CHARLOTTE DENNETT FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL
Dennett: Sorrell Invoked Public Records Law to Keep Yankee “Whitewash” Report on Buried Pipes Secret.
Cambridge, VT, Oct. 29 – Candidate for Attorney General Charlotte Dennett charged incumbent William Sorrell with deliberate obfuscation and misleading the public in the matter of a report on Entergy's misstatements on buried pipes which a State Commissioner called “whitewash.” In a Vermont Public Radio debate Sorrell said he never objected to releasing the report. In fact, Sorrell originally withheld it from 7 Days reporter Shay Totten and from the Constitutional Law Foundation. The Conservation Law Foundation eventually had to go to court to get the report released.
Said Dennett. “He should never have denied requests by the press and the Conservation Law Foundation for the report. In effect, he broke the public records law.”
Commissioner David O’Brien of the Department of Public Service – has publicly criticized the report as a “whitewash.” The report in essence absolves Entergy of false statements made before a state oversight panel regarding pipes which could be leaking tritium. The report holds that Yankee officials were only answering questions about a certain kind of pipe in the ground. The pipes turned out to be of a different kind, according to Yankee's definitions, which were discovered to be leaking tritium.
“First he cited his criminal investigation as a reason for not giving the report to Totten and the Foundation,” said Dennett. “Then, a few weeks later, he again told Totten that he couldn’t have the report, citing the confidentiality agreement he had made with Entergy. That’s why I used Vermont’s public records law for the confidentiality agreement, to see when it came into effect and what it covered.”
The agreement is dated February 17, 2010 and gives Sorrell “sole discretion” to release the report and any other documents that would be “otherwise required by law or would be in furtherance of the Attorney General’s discharge of his duties and responsibilities.”
This pattern of obfuscation and misleading statements is continuing in Sorrell’s office, Dennett charges, citing Deputy Attorney General Michael McShane’s cover letter to Dennett accompanying the report: “With regard to the Morgan Lewis (Entergy) report, the attorney general’s office did not object to the public release of the report by Entergy” [Our italics]. “That’s not what I was asking for,” says Dennett, “The issue is not Entergy withholding the report, the issue is Sorrell withholding the report for two whole months after he had received it, despite requests he release it.
The confidentiality agreement is actually a letter to Sorrell from Entergy’s Robert D. Sloan outlining the terms of their document exchange. It is attached to this press release. It states in part, “Entergy understands that the Attorney General’s Office will maintain the confidentiality of the Confidential Information and will not disclose it to any third party, except to the extent that the Attorney General in his sole discretion determines that disclosure is otherwise required by law or would be in furtherance of the Attorney General’s discharge of his duties and responsibilities.”
“The truth of the matter is this,” Dennett said. “Vermont’s public records law and the Vermont Constitution require a state agency to turn over documents, with some exceptions that are not applicable here. The central purpose of 1VSA Section 315, the public records law, is to allow the public to ‘review the action of a governmental officer even though such an examination may cause inconvenience or embarrassment.’