Captured Regulators

hotel lobby
Welfare Checks to Hotel Lobby Totaled $3.6 Billion Since 2008
2016-11-2
Luxury Hotels Got Especially Large Amounts  When industries mature, they use expanding profits to grow their lobbying influence and obtain not just favorable policies, but government largess in a variety of forms. In our newly launched look into the hotel industry’s influence peddling, we’re quickly finding this industry is following the path worn by the… Read more »
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offshore wind energy
Coast Guard Claim of “No External Participation” Contradicted by Shipping Lobbyist
2016-09-21
 Lobbyist was “Very Engaged” in Anti-Offshore Wind Energy Study In 2009, not long after President Obama declared the creation of an offshore wind energy industry a national priority, shipping industry lobbyists began working to block it. When the U.S. Interior Department began an accelerated leasing process the following year “to facilitate siting, leasing, and construction… Read more »
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value of solar
Text Messages Show Taxpayer-Funded Consumer “Advocate” Conspiring with APS Lobbyist
2016-09-8
“To Shape the Value of Solar Study Before it Starts” For 18 months, we’ve reported to Arizonans the evidence we’ve uncovered that indicates public business between captured regulators and utility lobbyists is taking place via text messages to conceal their communications. Now a small batch of texts between Lon Huber, Arizona’s Residential Utility Consumer Office’s… Read more »
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offshore wind energy developers
Coast Guard Failed to Engage Offshore Wind Energy Developers
2016-08-15
For the last six months, we have attempted to get basic questions answered about the U.S. Coast Guard’s offshore wind energy study and a Working Group that was tasked with determining how offshore wind farms — a priority for President Obama — could be safely integrated with the shipping industry off the Eastern Seaboard. After five… Read more »
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David Noble
Nevada PUC’s “Energy Guy” David Noble Shown the Door
2016-07-28
Turmoil has enveloped the Nevada Public Utilities Commission. And for good reason. Now Gov. Sandoval has pushed out Commissioner David Noble, where he began his career as an administrative attorney in 1997, before being appointed by Sandoval as a commissioner in 2011, and reappointed in 2012. David Noble was the prime mover behind the PUC’s “Christmas… Read more »
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