State to audit defunct energy alliance
The state's accountability office will investigate the Maine Green Energy Alliance, a home energy retrofit program that shut down earlier this year.
The Legislature's Government Oversight Committee voted unanimously to direct the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability to conduct an audit of the alliance and how it used federal stimulus money, according to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting. In February, the center reported that the Green Energy Alliance abandoned its one-year contract with Efficiency Maine to market energy retrofits to Maine households, funded through a $1.1 million federal stimulus grant, after falling short of its retrofit goals. The alliance spent about $500,000 of the grant and agreed to return the rest to the Efficiency Maine Trust. Lawmakers sought the probe in part because the alliance's founder, attorney Tom Federle, was a counsel to former Gov. John Baldacci, who helped the alliance get the grant.
The audit will study how the grant was spent, whether it was spent legally and whether the funds were properly accounted for. OPEGA Director Beth Ashcroft told the journalism center that the office will perform a "rapid response" audit, meaning it will become first priority. She did not say how long the audit would take.
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