Lawmaker asks for OPEGA inquiry
Some lawmakers are condemning the leak of a confidential state report about the Maine Green Energy Alliance, with one senator going so far as to ask the attorney general to investigate whether information was illegally revealed to the press.
Sen. David Trahan, R-Waldoboro, has asked Attorney General William Schneider to find out how a story on the investigation's findings appeared in the Portland Press Herald a week before the report was to be made public, according to the Kennebec Journal, a sister publication of the Press Herald. Some lawmakers said the leak was beneficial to the subjects of the report, both Maine Green Energy Alliance and its overseer, Efficiency Maine Trust, according to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.
Trahan is a member of the Legislature's Government Oversight Committee, which three months ago asked the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability to look into allegations that the alliance may have misspent federal funds meant to weatherize homes. The Press Herald reported Tuesday the state audit found the alliance did nothing wrong except have inadequate financial controls and documentation when it spent $500,000 of the $1.1 million grant to sign up just 50 homes.
"I find it deeply troubling that press accounts appear to contain protected information that has not been presented to the Legislature's Government Oversight Committee," Trahan says in a release. "At a minimum, they raise the appearance of impropriety and the possibility that a Class E crime has been committed."
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