Orange County Power Authority seeks improvement after audits
One day after another of the four remaining founding cities of the Orange County Power Authority announced it might leave the Community Choice Energy program, the utility’s board mulled improvement strategies during a meeting Wednesday in Irvine.
Buena Park Mayor Art Brown on Tuesday night agendized a withdrawal from OCPA for the next Buena Park City Council meeting on March 28.
Irvine and Huntington Beach remain tenuously in the organization, at least for now. Irvine Councilwoman Kathleen Treseder, vice chair of the OCPA Board of Directors, has backed off calls for the city to leave the agency.
Irvine is not only a founding member, but gave OCPA a loan of more than $7 million to help get the green energy program off the ground.
Treseder said after Wednesday’s meeting that she continues to believe that OCPA should remove its chief executive, Brian Probolsky, but she is more positive about the agency’s general direction.
“Once we started interacting with the new board, most of the board members are very reasonable and I think have similar goals to Irvine,” said Treseder, a science professor at UC Irvine. “So, I am optimistic that we’re going to be able to reach those goals ... I had a very hard timeline [for removing Probolsky] at the beginning of this, but I was willing to loosen that a bit, because I could see the board is making good progress toward that. It just takes a while to hire the general counsel. I want to make sure we do it right.”
Huntington Beach City Councilman Casey McKeon, who has been on the OCPA board since January, said Wednesday he is hopeful that he will be able to review energy contracts by next week. That will allow him to make an informed decision about the financial implications of Surf City possibly selling the contracts to exit the Southern California Edison alternative.
“We’re in a seller’s market, so I’m optimistic that the contracts will show that we bought [the energy] for a cheaper price than what they’re selling it for on today’s market,” McKeon said. “But without seeing them, I can’t make that claim yet.”
He added that OCPA’s resource adequacy remains a concern of his. The California Public Utilities Commission requires utility providers to essentially buy extra power for adequate resources to protect the grid, particularly in the summer months.
Last year, the Public Utilities Commission assessed OCPA a fine of more than $1.9 million for failing to deliver its required resource adequacy, according to an Orange County Grand Jury investigation.
On Wednesday, board members listened to an energy markets update from Kirby Dusel of Public Energy Advisors.
“The picture he painted was that in the next two or three years, it’s going to be very challenging to buy enough energy to meet the resource adequacy requirement,” McKeon said. “They’re not producing enough energy.”
Board members also heard a draft improvement plan presentation from former California state auditor Elaine Howle. Howle, now a member of Balance Public Relations, helped OCPA officials come up with a response following three audits that raised questions about the organization’s management, contracting practices and transparency.
One key change is the increased presence of a community advisory committee, which will hold regular meetings and have a member present at each subsequent OCPA board meeting.
In terms of transparency, a complete refresh of the website is underway to highlight what the organization does and how it benefits the community. Also by May, an oversight committee that includes members of the board will begin meeting regularly.
OCPA continues to actively recruit from a power resources director.
The state audit, released Feb. 28, stated that the pattern of OCPA contracting practices “that were neither competitive nor accountable to the board’s oversight poses a risk to the organization.”
OCPA officials responded with a statement that partially said they didn’t believe the state auditors fully understood the intricacies of the contracts.
On Feb. 7, a letter from a coalition of more than 20 organizations dedicated to climate and social justice stated the need to replace Probolsky, the chief executive, as soon as possible. State Sen. Dave Min, whose district includes much of coastal Orange County and Irvine, also has publicly called for Probolsky to step down or be fired.
Signers of the letter included Ayn Craciun, the Orange County policy manager for Climate Action Campaign, who called into Wednesday’s meeting.
“OCPA’s situation could not be more dire,” Craciun said during public comments. “This agency is on life support, and it is this board’s responsibility to take swift action to remove the root cause of so many of the failures.”
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