At last month’s Leelanau County Board of Commissioners regular session, Patty Lesch of Northport called on the board to investigate Joe DeFors, chair of the county’s Energy Futures Task Force, for allegedly “seeking personal gain in his position.”
The accusation centers on Leelanau County’s application for $1.5 million in funds through the Michigan Public Service Commission’s (MPSC) Renewable Energy and Electrification Infrastructure Enhancement and Development program, to be used to install two solar arrays at the government center campus in Suttons Bay.
The application was presented by the Energy Futures Task Force in February and says that DeFors and another task force member could be “call(ed) upon” as consultants in a project leadership role, where these two people would receive a $45 per hour salary for an estimated three hours of work per week.
Interim Administrator Richard Lewis requested on behalf of the county board that their legal counsel, Cohl, Stoker, & Toskey, P.C., give thoughts on whether this is a conflict of interest. County attorney Matt Nordfjord responded last week, and Lewis shared his opinion with board approval during Tuesday’s executive board session.
In Nordfjord’s opinion, the grant application could present a conflict of interest, but it “may turn on the response from members of the task force.” In his view, the MSPC grant application does not violate any state laws, but it could violate the county’s “more restrictive” policy on conflicts of interest.
“An argument could be made that the task force members openly advocated for the grant, which was the purpose of the task force,” Nordfjord states. “The grant does provide for compensation for their future work on the project. The grant could have excluded them as project leadership team, or required them to work without compensation. The justification for their involvement is that it would make the project ‘more efficient and effective’ as they were already in place and had an existing network of relationships.” “As a technical matter, Mr.
DeFors does benefit from the grant contract he lobbied for,” Nordfjord continues. “But if the true benefit is to the county [as stated in the justification language] it is something the BOC should consider.”
As of press time, it is unclear whether the county will be awarded the funds that they applied for. According to michi-be announced in September.
“If you get the grant, there is no obligation on this board to use the services of Joe DeFors and the other individual. Those are decisions that the board will have to make if the grant is awarded,” Lewis told the board of commissioners Tuesday. “I wouldn’t recommend taking this any further unless the board gets the grant.”
The board did not take any further action on this matter, but in the brief discussion that ensued, County Commissioner Melinda Lautner insisted that she “tried to ask those questions that evening, but instead I was attacked” by DeFors.
Lautner was referencing a series of heated exchanges between DeFors and herself at the February regular session, when the board of commissioners approved the MPSC grant application by a 4-3 vote.
At this meeting, Lautner repeatedly alleged that the contractors listed in the project’s budget narrative manufacture and assemble their products in China. Lautner is on the Cherryland Electric Cooperative board of directors, which currently powers the government center campus.
“As far as I’m concerned, once you voted to accept the grant, you knew it (the possible conflict of interest) was there. So, move on,” Lewis said to Lautner.
A separate complaint was filed against the task force for allegedly violating the Michigan Open Meetings Act (OMA) by not posting meeting notices and minutes for several months. The complaint was investigated by the Michigan State Police, who submitted their findings to the county prosecuting attorney’s office June 5.
The county prosecutor has not completed his review of this report at the time of writing, but Nordfjord argued previously that the task force is not subject to the OMA because it lacks “decisionmaking authority.”
