New questions on role of Doyle's office in sale of nuclear power plant

WISCONSIN - Gov. Jim Doyle's top aide met with utility representatives to discuss the sale of a nuclear power plant just before speaking by phone with a utility regulator deciding the case - raising new questions about whether the administration played a role in the sale's controversial approval.

The conversations, which turned up in a Wisconsin State Journal review of the calendar for Doyle chief of staff Susan Goodwin, came to light as federal and state authorities probe possible ties between the sale and campaign contributions to Doyle from utility executives.

The Feb. 10, 2004, meeting between Goodwin and representatives of Dominion Resources of Richmond, Va., came 10 days after Doyle received $2,000 in donations from executives at the utility, which was seeking regulators' approval to buy the Kewaunee plant.

Thirty minutes after that meeting's scheduled end, Goodwin was also scheduled to receive a call from Burnie Bridge, then- chairwoman of the state Public Service Commission, the calendar shows.

Doyle spokesman Matt Canter confirmed that the meeting and phone call took place but said Goodwin's meeting with the utility amounted to a courtesy introduction for Doyle's staff and the later phone call from Bridge had nothing to do with the Kewaunee sale, focusing instead on an upcoming Doyle cabinet meeting.

At other times, Goodwin and the governor's office received briefings on the public facts of the Kewaunee case and others before the PSC but never discussed how the PSC would or should rule, Canter said. In the Doyle administration, the PSC has played a key cabinet role in advising Doyle on energy issues and developing policy, he said.

"Of course the governor's office speaks with utilities and the PSC. There's no issue more important in Wisconsin than energy. That's just the bottom line," Canter said. But, "the governor's office would never get involved in (a PSC decision)."

The calendar entry for the Bridge phone call reads: "follow-up to last Friday's meeting." There is no entry in the calendar on the two previous Fridays for a meeting between the two.

Canter said Goodwin had not been interviewed by investigators.

The State Journal reported in December that U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic and Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager were probing possible connections between the Kewaunee sale decision and tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions made by executives of several utilities to Doyle.

In a related probe, a state purchasing official was convicted in June of fraud for steering a state travel contract to a Milwaukee firm whose top executive had donated to Doyle's campaign.

A Biskupic spokesman did not return repeated phone calls.

But a source close to the investigation confirmed that Biskupic's inquiry continues and is focusing on both the Kewaunee sale and the travel contract. Goodwin's possible involvement in the Kewaunee sale is also being examined, said the source, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.

Dominion execs contributed $2,000 to Doyle's campaign on Jan 31, 2004, and have not donated to a state candidate in Wisconsin before or since, according to a Wisconsin Democracy Campaign database.

Dominion spokesman Richard Zuercher said that the meeting with Goodwin was a chance to introduce the company to the governor's staff and "put a face with a name."

The company and its workers give political donations in many states and followed all the rules in Wisconsin, he said.

"We are a corporate citizen. We participate as is our right in the political process," he said.

As a body that functions much like a court, the PSC's commissioners make their decisions in cases like Kewaunee based purely on the record of the case and not on any outside influence, said Eric Callisto, executive assistant to the PSC's current chairman, Dan Ebert. Officially independent, the three- member commission is controlled by two Doyle appointees.

"The PSC briefed the governor's office on occasion (about cases) but never in a way that would divulge which way a commissioner would rule," Callisto said.

But current PSC staff had no knowledge of what Goodwin and Bridge, who was later reassigned by Doyle to the state health department, might have discussed during the call in question, Callisto said.

Bridge, who has not responded to requests for comment on Kewaunee, said in a public statement last year she considers allegations of improper influence on the commission "absolutely untrue and deeply offensive."

A day before the PSC ruled on the Kewaunee case in November 2004, executives at utility Wisconsin Public Service Corp. of Green Bay, one of the two companies that owned the nuclear plant, held a fundraiser that brought in $25,750 for Doyle. Employees of WPS and Alliant Energy Corp. of Madison, Kewaunee's other owner, gave an additional $15,250 to Doyle between November 2004 and April 2005, the most critical months in the case, according to the Democracy Campaign.

Spokesmen for the two utilities denied there was anything improper in the donations.

The PSC rejected the sale and then later reopened the case after Dominion revised its proposal, reversing itself and approving the sale in March 2005.

Consumer advocates and good government groups split on what, if anything, the meetings between Goodwin and Bridge might mean.

Mike McCabe, executive director of the Democracy Campaign, said, "It seriously undermines the persistent claim that the PSC is an independent agency that deals with these matters in a manner that's completely independent of the governor's office."

Nino Amato, a former utility executive and vocal critic of the Public Service Commission, said that there were too many coincidences in the case and that he hoped investigators would resolve them.

Lee Cullen disagreed. Cullen, the lead attorney for a broad coalition that opposed the sale and sued unsuccessfully to stop it, called Bridge the "original straight arrow."

"I completely disagree with the (Kewaunee) decision on the merits," said Cullen, who has also headed up a renewable energy task force for Doyle.

But, "I don't think there's any indication that the decision was influenced by the governor's office," said Cullen, who has also briefed investigators on the complicated case.

Bridge and Goodwin had a number of meetings and conversations in 2004 and early 2005. Some of those meetings were about broad energy initiatives of the Doyle administration, the calendar shows.

Asked about three conversations scheduled between the women in a week and a half in February 2005, Canter noted that Bridge and Goodwin were close, having worked together for years in the state attorney general's office under Doyle. "Those were meetings of a personal nature," Canter said.

Ratepayer groups opposed the Kewaunee sale, saying it would reduce state control over the aging reactor, but utilities said the sale would lower the financial risk to the ratepayers.