AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Ethics Commission and dark money groups that opposed Central Maine Power’s transmission corridor ahead of a 2021 referendum reached agreements Wednesday on penalties for campaign finance violations.
Wednesday’s Maine Ethics Commission meeting was the latest step in a drawn-out, years-long process that began with the commission starting a probe in 2020 into whether Stop the Corridor — the assumed name of a limited liability company, Clean Energy for ME, that did not have to reveal its donors under federal law — should have registered as a political action committee while working against the New England Clean Energy Connect transmission project.
The commission concluded Stop the Corridor qualified as a ballot question committee, or BQC, because it received and spent more than $5,000 to influence the transmission line initiative. A consent agreement unveiled Wednesday showed the group has agreed to pay $50,000 for not registering as a committee and missing three campaign finance reports in 2019 and 2020.
The commission also found a separate group, Alpine Initiatives, was used as a pass-through for a $150,000 donation to the Maine Democratic Party to support “get out the vote efforts” in 2018, with consultants from Portland-based law firm Bernstein Shur viewing Democratic officials “as generally more likely to oppose” the eventual New England Clean Energy Connect project, per a consent agreement.
The Maine consultants “believed the contribution would help their relationships with Democratic officials,” and one consultant called the former Maine Democratic Party deputy director about two weeks before the November 2018 election to discuss a donor that would give the party $150,000. The consent agreement does not name the consultant or deputy director, and the consultant did not identify the donor or any “policy agenda” to the deputy.
Commission documents revealed NextEra Energy Resources LLC, a Florida-based group that says it is the world’s largest wind and solar producer, funded Stop the Corridor by giving it more than $95,000 between August 2019 and March 2020. The Hawthorn Group, a Virginia-based public affairs consulting firm, had approached Maine political consultants in late 2017 or 2018 about doing work to oppose the corridor on behalf of NextEra, per the consent agreement.
With Alpine Initiatives, the Maine consultants and Hawthorn agreed to form the new group in late October 2018. Hawthorn transferred $160,000 to Alpine Initiatives’ bank account on Oct. 29, 2018, and Alpine Initiatives wired $150,000 to the Maine Democratic Party the next day.
Alpine Initiatives did not make any other contributions to other groups before it was dissolved in December 2019. Wednesday’s consent agreement with the ethics commission said it will pay $160,000 in civil penalties for failing to register and file a campaign finance report.
NextEra, which supplies electricity in Maine and other New England states, had also feuded in the past with CMP parent Avangrid over safety upgrades at a New Hampshire nuclear power plant that were slowing the transmission line project.
Stop the Corridor used the NextEra funds to pay No CMP Corridor, a registered group, and Bernstein Shur to oppose the New England transmission line, according to records included in the consent agreement.
Maine Democratic Party spokesperson Annina Breen said the party would not release information regarding “past personnel” and “filed all of the necessary and legally required campaign finance reports to the proper oversight authorities” in 2018.
“We cannot comment on the actions of Alpine Initiatives – the subject of this inquiry, or any other party beyond what is contained in the Maine Ethics Commission report, and we appreciate the work of the Commission and its staff to ensure that Maine’s campaign finance laws are being followed fully,” Breen wrote in an email.
The legal bickering and various ethics complaints characterized a contentious referendum campaign that ended with 59 percent of voters rejecting the transmission project in November 2021.
But a jury nullified the referendum this past April, ruling that CMP’s parent and Hydro-Quebec had a constitutional right to proceed with the project after having already started construction on the 145-mile transmission line in January 2021, 10 months before the referendum.
The project, which grew in cost from $1 billion to $1.5 billion amid inflation and legal challenges, and which Massachusetts ratepayers will fully fund, features a transmission line from Quebec to Lewiston to supply up to 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to the New England power grid — enough electricity for about 1 million homes.
Supporters said it would lower energy costs in all of New England as well as reduce carbon pollution, while critics argued the benefits were overblown and that it would destroy woodlands along a new 53-mile section carved through forests to reach the Canadian border.
The request for an Maine Ethics Commission investigation came from Clean Energy Matters, a PAC funded by CMP that argued Stop the Corridor had to register as a political committee in December 2019 after it spent at least $50,000 to help the petitioning drive to get the citizen initiative opposing the CMP corridor on the ballot but declined to share how it raised the money.
Katherine Knox, an attorney for Stop the Corridor, had argued the group formed in April 2018 with the sole purpose of stopping the transmission corridor “through participation and intervention in the local, state and national permitting process,” rather than via an election. Stop the Corridor also argued it adhered to state reporting laws when donating to the No CMP Corridor PAC via an “in-kind contribution” and was not required to separately register as a BQC.
But Newell Augur, an attorney for Clean Energy Matters, argued Stop the Corridor’s main purpose changed after the ballot question petition drive began in 2019. Augur also submitted a letter outlining how Stop the Corridor spent roughly $722,000 on television and radio advertising between 2018 and 2019 and $234,500 on television ads from December 2019 to January 2020.
Apart from its years-long efforts in the hydropower case, CMP worked with Versant Power through political committees to help defeat a referendum earlier this month that sought to replace the two largest private utilities in Maine with a new public utility dubbed the Pine Tree Power Co.
Nearly 70 percent of voters rejected the Pine Tree Power proposal, and political groups funded by the foreign-owned parents of CMP and Versant heavily outspent the group supporting Pine Tree Power.
The Pine Tree Power campaign also came up during Wednesday’s meeting, when the ethics commission approved a reduced fine of $3,000 for the Versant-funded PAC, Maine Energy Progress, after it was three days late to notify the commission in October of a roughly $257,000 contribution it received from Versant.