Katie McGinty, the Democrats’ nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, cashed out of state government and into the subsidized renewable-energy companies whose agenda she had pushed when in office. That subsidized energy company then turned around and funded her political campaigns.
This may be why her allies have fought so hard in court to block the disclosure of her public records until after Election Day.
Thar Energy is a green-energy company that deals in geothermal, solar and biofuels. In 2008, Thar executives lobbied McGinty on multiple occasions, her schedule reveals.
Thar Technologies, a Thar Energy subsidiary, in early 2008 was developing “technology for environmentally friendly and cost-effective production of diesel-grade biofuel from plants,” according to the National Institutes of Science and Technology. NIST in January 2008 handed Thar a $1.9 million grant to build a biodiesel plant in southwestern Pennsylvania.
On Jan. 28, 2008, McGinty, Secretary of Environmental Protection in Pennsylvania at the time, held a conference call with Brian Moyer, the VP at Thar Technologies. Four months later, McGinty dedicated a Thursday afternoon to meet with Thar officials, including Lalit Chordia, the CEO. Her schedule also shows dinner with Chordia.
The meeting, according to her schedule, was partly to discuss the “possibility of Thar applying to AFIG [the Alternative Fuels Incentive Grant program] for assistance.” One McGinty aide who took part in the meetings was Dan Desmond, deputy secretary for energy and technology deployment at the DEP. One email shows McGinty expressly requested Desmond’s presence there. Desmond had been a key player in expanding the AFIG, according to a press release announcing Desmond’s resignation from DEP in June 2008.
McGinty that summer followed Desmond through the revolving door. On July 3, 2008, Desmond (less than two weeks out from his time serving the people of Pennsylvania by subsidizing green energy) founded Peregrine Technology Partners, “a firm focused on commercialization of resource efficient technologies.” His founding partner was McGinty.
Sure enough, a few months later, Thar won one of those Alternative Fuel Incentive Grants that they had lobbied McGinty for — a $500,000 grant from Pennsylvania’s taxpayers.
McGinty, meanwhile, had begun racking up the corporate gigs from the companies she had subsidized, including Spanish company Iberdrola which got tens of millions of taxpayer dollars before McGinty cashed out to a six-figure salary on the company’s board.
Another company to make McGinty a director: Thar Energy, according to a bio published in September 2012.
Soon, McGinty planned her next pass through the revolving door, ad she launched a campaign for governor. Her Finance Committee — her core fundraising operation — included Thar Energy CEO Lalit Chordia. Chordia gave $10,000 to McGinty’s 2014 gubernatorial campaign.
In brief: McGinty expanded a subsidy program, helped a company get that subsidy, cashed out, joined that company’s board of directors, and then roped in that company’s CEO as a fundraiser and donor.
This is the pattern with McGinty.
The Iberdrola deal was another example — and Iberdrola officials also bankrolled McGinty’s governor run.
McGinty’s 2008 cashout from the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection was her second cashout. She left Bill Clinton’s Council on Environmental Quality in 1998 and soon joined a lobbying firm, where, in a striking parallel to her relationship with Dan Desmond, her CEQ underling Tom Jensen became her K Street boss. Her lobbying client was a drug company petitioning the administration, in effect, for an exemption for a new emissions rule the Clinton administration had recently completed.
Given this track record, you have to wonder what McGinty was up to in her six months last year as chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf. Unfortunately, the Wolf administration denied a Freedom of Information request. Republicans had to sue to force the administration to follow the law. Thanks to the Wolf administration’s legal wranglings, we probably won’t see McGinty’s official records until after Election Day.
It’s understandable that McGinty would want to keep secret what she’s done in her latest stint in public service, considering how her two earlier stints involved regulating and subsidizing companies that then hired her. Now she’s asking for a promotion to the U.S. Senate. Just think what she could pull off there.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
