EVERETT — The former head of the Snohomish County PUD has requested several hundred emails, expense reports and other public records related to a whistleblower working at the utility.
The public utility district’s recently retired CEO and General Manager Steve Klein accused the worker of conspiring against him and the PUD in his records requests.
The PUD declined to comment on Klein’s allegations.
The whistleblower, Anthony Curtis, declined to speak on the record about the records requests.
Earlier this year, he filed a complaint that prompted an independent investigation into a series of no-bid contracts the PUD gave to a company started by a former employee.
The PUD is still churning through Klein’s records requests, vetting each of the hundreds of documents for information that shouldn’t be disclosed or requires the district to notify a third party. It has delivered some records already.
“The records have answered many questions and confirmed many concerns,” Klein said in an email to the Herald. He did not provide further detail.
The work with the Seattle-based 1Energy Systems was a key part of Klein’s ambitious efforts to put the PUD at the front of the industry’s clean-energy efforts.
The PUD since 2012 has awarded four no-bid contracts worth nearly $15 million to 1Energy.
The ethics investigation found that the district broke its ethics policy by not taking adequate steps to prevent “any inference of favoritism or undue influence” in awarding the initial contract.
Klein started requesting records in early May after The Herald first reported on the investigation and a few days after he had retired, a decision he announced before the whistleblower complaint.
In three requests filed the same morning, he asked for Curtis’ complaint, and for phone logs and emails between him and his supervisor.
In one request, Klein accused Curtis of having “some motive and agenda that goes beyond the whistleblower process,” and characterized his behavior as “irrational”.
In his request for emails between Curtis and his supervisor, Klein said “I suspect that these two individuals have conspired to purposely defame me and the clean energy accomplishments of the PUD while I was the general manager.”
Curtis and his supervisor have been heavily involved in the PUD’s work developing energy storage systems since it began in 2011.
The request generated more than 23,000 emails. Klein identified at least a few hundred to be disclosed.
Those emails include communications between Curtis and the outside attorney investigating the complaint. A handful of emails requested by Klein appear to pertain to the whistleblower’s personal medical issues.
In July, Klein filed three more records requests, including the worker’s expense reports related to attending two industry conferences.
“I want specific detail so I can ascertain the expenses he claimed per day and for what specific purpose,” he said.
He also asked for copies of the district’s policies on travel expense reimbursement, and those for serving on external committees and accepting gratuities from companies, among others.
In his request, Klein asks for information on the process used “to justify” Curtis’ participation on a “highly technical” committee.
He also asked for information about the employee’s educational background and the technical requirements for any job classifications he has held at the PUD.
Klein also asks for records about a handful of companies which had sent or exchanged emails with Curtis.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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