Sunlight is the best disinfectant. This quote's origin is murky, but its meaning is not. A democratic government cannot operate in secret. A government must be transparent to its citizens. A government works for its citizens. A government has no money of its own but collects the money it spends from its citizens. There is never a good reason for a government to withhold information from the citizens it governs.
But yet the U.S. Department of Energy took a week to make a decision whether or not to publicly publish the more than 80 comments it received on its proposed rules/requirements for its new, taxpayer-funded Transmission Facilitation Program.
If you thought allowing the government to give 2.5 billion of your tax dollars to for-profit corporations owned by the political elite could be a bad idea... it's about to get a whole lot worse.
Noting that the DOE docket for TFP comments did not have the feature to browse submitted comments turned on, and being notified that
But yet the U.S. Department of Energy took a week to make a decision whether or not to publicly publish the more than 80 comments it received on its proposed rules/requirements for its new, taxpayer-funded Transmission Facilitation Program.
If you thought allowing the government to give 2.5 billion of your tax dollars to for-profit corporations owned by the political elite could be a bad idea... it's about to get a whole lot worse.
Noting that the DOE docket for TFP comments did not have the feature to browse submitted comments turned on, and being notified that
Your comment has been sent for review. This process is dependent on agency public submission policies/procedures and processing times. Once the agency has posted your comment, you may view it on Regulations.gov using your Comment Tracking Number.
I emailed transmissionfacilitation@hq.doe.gov to ask when comments would be publicly available. I initially was told that they did not know if comments would be posted. What? What reason would there be to hide them?
Just today I was told that DOE had decided to make the comments available on the regulations.gov website. However (there's always a fly in DOE's ointment) the comments would first have to be "reviewed" for personally identifiable information and "they need to be made 508 compliant." DOE has no idea how long this may take. I'm still waiting to see comments from a webinar last month that DOE promised would be posted. *crickets* It seems that this "review" and "compliance" is just an excuse to avoid posting comments while appearing to be open to the idea.
Don't tell me that the federal government's slicky regulations.gov website cannot perform this function but that the task must be manually performed by agency employees. I'm not buying it. This is nothing more than a bogus excuse to avoid transparency.
Even though DOE can't manage to publicly post comments, some of the commenters can manage to post their own comments on the web without all this bogus "review."
Such as RTO/ISO comments available here.
And PJM's specific comments available here.
The online comment receptacle says 86 comments were submitted before the deadline last night. But yet you can't read any of them on regulations.gov, even your own.
Considering that DOE is poised to give away $2.5B of your hard-earned dollars to connected rich people to "facilitate" a bunch of new transmission we don't want or need, you'd think there should be a little sunshine within the program. You'd think that the proposed application requirements and review criteria would be public information requiring independent evaluation. Remember Solyndra?
Instead, DOE is keeping the comments of the potential recipients of your tax dollars hidden. It's just the transmission merchants and the DOE employees. No taxpayers or other commenters need to be involved. In fact, if they don't post the comments, they could just delete yours with one click.
The inmates are running the asylum.
Drain the swamp.
Drag Dracula into the sunshine.
Who do these entitled little bureaucrats think they are?
If you want to help drag DOE Dracula into the sunshine, let them know you want to see the comments by emailing transmissionfacilitation@hq.doe.gov.
Just today I was told that DOE had decided to make the comments available on the regulations.gov website. However (there's always a fly in DOE's ointment) the comments would first have to be "reviewed" for personally identifiable information and "they need to be made 508 compliant." DOE has no idea how long this may take. I'm still waiting to see comments from a webinar last month that DOE promised would be posted. *crickets* It seems that this "review" and "compliance" is just an excuse to avoid posting comments while appearing to be open to the idea.
Don't tell me that the federal government's slicky regulations.gov website cannot perform this function but that the task must be manually performed by agency employees. I'm not buying it. This is nothing more than a bogus excuse to avoid transparency.
Even though DOE can't manage to publicly post comments, some of the commenters can manage to post their own comments on the web without all this bogus "review."
Such as RTO/ISO comments available here.
And PJM's specific comments available here.
The online comment receptacle says 86 comments were submitted before the deadline last night. But yet you can't read any of them on regulations.gov, even your own.
Considering that DOE is poised to give away $2.5B of your hard-earned dollars to connected rich people to "facilitate" a bunch of new transmission we don't want or need, you'd think there should be a little sunshine within the program. You'd think that the proposed application requirements and review criteria would be public information requiring independent evaluation. Remember Solyndra?
Instead, DOE is keeping the comments of the potential recipients of your tax dollars hidden. It's just the transmission merchants and the DOE employees. No taxpayers or other commenters need to be involved. In fact, if they don't post the comments, they could just delete yours with one click.
The inmates are running the asylum.
Drain the swamp.
Drag Dracula into the sunshine.
Who do these entitled little bureaucrats think they are?
If you want to help drag DOE Dracula into the sunshine, let them know you want to see the comments by emailing transmissionfacilitation@hq.doe.gov.
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