I wanted to share with you an article published in the Times Union:

NYSERDA’s lawyers briefed members of the state energy agency’s board on plans to transfer the 180-acre Saratoga Technology + Energy Park in Malta to SUNY Polytechnic Institute weeks before a Sept. 21 meeting where they failed to approve the deal.

Several NYSERDA board members appeared to be surprised or blindsided by the idea of the proposed transaction, part of a plan by NYSERDA to provide $10 million in funding to a SUNY Poly semiconductor research program.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="445"] NYSERDA general counsel Noah Shaw responds to questions by board member Ken Daly at the Sept. 21 board meeting[/caption]

The most vocal was National Grid executive Ken Daly, whose suggestion that a independent review of the sale was needed in light of “ongoing audits” of SUNY Poly led to the vote being postponed.

However, internal documents obtained by the Times Union show that NYSERDA lawyers began talking with individual board members about plans for the STEP transfer to SUNY Poly more than a month before the scheduled vote.

And board members received documents related to the sale two weeks before the Sept. 21 meeting, the documents show.

The documents also show that NYSERDA and its legal department began drafting documents for the sale of STEP to SUNY Poly back in May and that the outside law firm of Harris Beach in Albany was brought in at the very beginning to ensure compliance with the Public Authorities Accountability Act and proper notification of the NYSERDA board.

That work included having new appraisals done of the two parcels of land that make up the STEP campus. Together, the two parcels were valued at $9 million in appraisals completed in mid-July by Bauer Appraisal Group on Wolf Road in Colonie.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="445"] The Saratoga Technology + Energy Park is home to Hudson Valley Community College’s TEC-SMART campus[/caption]

NYSERDA’s obligation to SUNY Poly is the result of a 2011 deal struck by Gov. Andrew Cuomo with the world’s largest computer chip manufacturers to create what’s known as the Global 450 Consortium, or G450C, a $4.8 billion research program at SUNY Poly. Cuomo committed $400 million in state funding to the consortium, of which $100 million is supposed to come from NYSERDA and the New York Power Authority. NYSERDA is responsible for $25 million of that number, while NYPA is picking up the rest of the tab.

Under a proposal issued by Cuomo’s budget office in June of 2014, NYSERDA is being allowed to satisfy $10 million of its G450C commitment by giving SUNY Poly the STEP campus, which SUNY Poly could use to attract more high-tech partners. The other $15 million is supposed to come from NYSERDA energy efficiency programs.

Officials at SUNY Poly became furious with the NYSERDA board last month after Daly’s comments and the questions raised by other board members about why the land was being given to SUNY Poly made it appear that the STEP deal came out of the blue with no public policy basis.

The connection to the G450C funding never came up explicitly during the Sept. 21 meeting. However, at one point, board member Jay Koh, a New York City private equity banker, noted that that “it would be great to have another $9 million lying around someplace,” perhaps alluding to the fact that NYSERDA was using the transfer of the property to SUNY Poly, for just $1, to satisfy its $10 million pledge to the G450C.

NYSERDA’s press office has repeatedly declined to explain why the G450C funding requirement was never mentioned in the board meeting. However, SUNY Poly officials have said that NYSERDA and its board were aware of the G450C connection to the transfer of STEP.

“It is a sad state of affairs when prominent members of NYSERDA’s board of directors publicly demonstrate ignorance of NYSERDA’s own obligations and commitments,” SUNY Poly said in a statement at the time.

NYSERDA has provided just $1.5 million of that program funding to the G450C to date, according to a July letter written by NYSERDA CEO John Rhodes to SUNY Poly officials. However, Rhodes pledged in the letter to provide the remaining $13.5 million over the next three years.

Rhodes said the money would come from NYSERDA grants or from auction proceeds from Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon dioxide cap and trade program led by New York and others states that is designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

By Larry Rulison on October 15, 2015 at 11:29 AM