At public meetings Tuesday and Wednesday, Iberdrola Renewables unveiled plans to distribute “direct partnership payments” totaling $565,000 annually to residents of Windham and Grafton if 24 turbines are built in Stiles Brook Forest.
The offer came about a month before the two towns are scheduled to vote on the wind project. Turbine opponents equated the payments to “buying votes” and even bribery. But after a review, the attorney general’s office has dismissed those complaints.
Iberdrola’s proposal, as articulated in a flier distributed at the Windham meeting, “does not appear to constitute undue influence with regard to our state law,” said Michael Duane, a senior assistant attorney general.
Iberdrola last fall announced plans for building 28 turbines at Stiles Brook, a forested tract in Windham and Grafton owned by New Hampshire-based Meadowsend Timberlands Ltd. This past week, the company disclosed that four of those turbines – all in Windham – had been eliminated.
While smaller than initially planned, Stiles Brook still would be Vermont’s biggest wind energy site, capable of generating 82.8 megawatts of power.
There has been stiff opposition to Stiles Brook Wind among anti-turbine activists. And that only intensified after Iberdrola’s Oct. 4 and 5 meetings in Windham and Grafton, largely due to the company’s revised payment schedule to the two towns.
Iberdrola last year said Stiles Brook Wind would contribute a combined $1 million annually to the two host towns if the project is built. That number has risen to $1.5 million – $1 million per year in Windham, and $500,000 for Grafton.
The towns would get tax revenue as well as “supplemental” payments from Iberdrola. The company also unveiled two new proposals: Annual allocations for local nonprofits and educational scholarships, as well as “direct partnership payments” to registered voters who opt to receive them.
It’s not yet clear how such payments would be distributed. But in literature distributed at the meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, Iberdrola made a specific offer: Based on current voter-registration numbers, each Windham voter could receive at least $1,162 per year, and each Grafton voter would be eligible for at least $428 annually.
At the Windham meeting, Iberdrola spokesman Paul Copleman said the company’s Stiles Brook proposal is not unusual. “All of our projects that are up and running across the country deliver economic benefits to the community in a variety of ways,” Copleman said.
But the financial incentives led to backlash among Stiles Brook opponents, who noted that Windham and Grafton residents are scheduled to vote Nov. 8 on the wind project. Iberdrola repeatedly has said it will abide by the results of those votes.
The anti-turbine organization Grafton Woodlands Group labeled the developer’s monetary offer “outrageous” and characterized it as “the latest attempt to exert undue influence upon the upcoming legally warned vote.”
In Windham, activist Nancy Tips said the financial proposition “seems to me to fit the definition of a bribe.”
“The whole idea of linking the outcome of an election to direct annual payments to registered voters is inappropriate and just plain wrong,” Tips said. “Regardless of its intention, it appears to me like an effort to buy votes.”
Such accusations made their way to the Vermont attorney general’s office in the days after the Windham and Grafton meetings. But Duane said his office found no legal issues based on the literature distributed by Iberdrola in Windham.
The relevant statute, Duane said, is titled “offenses against the purity of elections.” It prescribes a maximum $200 fine for “a person who attempts by bribery, threats or any undue influence to dictate, control or alter the vote of a freeman or freewoman about to be given at a local, primary or general election.”
One key factor in his decision, Duane said, was the fact that Iberdrola would provide a benefit to all residents regardless of their stance on the wind project.
“Since (the company) cannot determine how one voted … someone who did not vote could take advantage of this partnership payment,” Duane said. “Someone who voted no could take advantage of the partnership payment.”
In addition to determining that there was no “quid pro quo” intended in Iberdrola’s financial package, the attorney general’s office also – based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling – gave favorable consideration to the fact that the company disclosed its offer in an open setting “for all to hear and scrutinize.”
After allegations of bribery surfaced, Iberdrola issued a statement lamenting that “a small handful of opponents will stop at nothing to try and taint a proposed partnership between our company and these two towns.”
“Our current proposal is based on feedback from community members who are frustrated that the tax relief from the project would give a larger break to those with more expensive properties,” the statement said. “Our proposal is aimed at equitably distributing economic benefits across both communities, including property owners and renters.”
The company also pointed out that the Stiles Brook project is contingent not just on the towns’ vote, but also on a state certificate of public good. If Iberdrola gets all the necessary permissions and the turbines are constructed, “every full-time resident of each town at that time would be entitled to the proposed benefits regardless of how, or whether, they voted,” the company’s statement said.
