A2 Wednesday, 06.17.2015 The Daily Herald
POWERBALL: Saturday’s drawing was for $60 million. Saturday’s numbers: 29-41-48-52-54, Powerball 29. The next drawing is Wednesday for $70 million. MEGA MILLIONS: Tuesday’s drawing was for $35 million. Tuesday’s numbers: 8-19-26-5667, Megaball 14. The next drawing is Friday. LOTTO: Monday’s drawing was for $2.7 million. Saturday’s numbers: 1-27-17-41-42. The next drawing is Wednesday for $2.8 million. HIT 5: Monday’s drawing was for $200,000. Saturday’s numbers: 4-8-12-20-34. The next drawing is Wednesday for $100,000. MATCH 4: Tuesday’s numbers: 7-9-18-23. DAILY GAME: Tuesday’s numbers: 2-7-9. KENO: Tuesday’s numbers: 1-3-4-15-18-2325-27-35-36-43-46-4853-56-61-63-67-68-74.
CORRECTION Nominations for the ChangeMaker award, which are due June 28, should be sent to C h a n g e Ma k e r @ P I H CSnohomish.org. An article in Tuesday’s Herald contained a typographical error in the email address
CONTACTS Home delivery questions: 425-339-3200 Executive Editor Neal Pattison: 425-339-3480; npattison@heraldnet.com Sports: Kevin Brown, 425-339-3474; kbrown@ heraldnet.com
PUD: Employees worry about utility’s response From Page A1
Based on the meeting minutes and documents, though, that presentation was informational — about how the process works — rather than a critical review of how to improve standards. The senior employee who talked to The Daily Herald shared a June 3 email to all employees from interim CEO and General Manager Anne Spangler. Without specifically mentioning the report’s finding, Spangler wrote: “Now that we can move forward, I want to take the opportunity to remind us all how much we have to be proud of.” The employee was struck by the email’s tone. “They think this investigation is a pesky intrusion,” the employee said. Kinerk’s report says that the PUD and Kaplan failed to follow the district’s policy prohibiting behavior that creates the appearance of a conflict of interest. Otherwise, the report says, the district complied with policies and state law in
Planes From Page A1
He had a brand-new 1954 Ford with a white interior. The whole way, Clarence fussed at her for her muddy boots, she said. There wasn’t much she could do. It’d been a rainy night. In the Air Force, Clarence became a crew chief, in charge of the plane while it was on the ground, and overseeing the maintenance. He flew as a scanner, “a fancy name for a gunner,” in a B-29 radar
awarding no-bid contracts to 1Energy to manage installation of energy storage technology. Energy storage systems connect industrial-sized batteries to the power grid, allowing a utility to store excess energy for times when demand is high. A second senior employee described the PUD leadership’s reaction as, “We’re sweeping it under the carpet, and we’re moving forward.” The official reaction to the ethics violation, the second employee said, has co-workers wondering if the PUD’s ethics policy is “now no longer applicable to any PUD employee, or just optional for higher level management.” The whistleblower, Anthony Curtis, whose ethics complaint launched the investigation, said in an interview he is “disappointed that they aren’t taking any proactive steps to address the findings in the report, which are very serious.” Curtis contacted a commissioner in March with his concerns. Later that month,
the commission hired an outside attorney, Colleen Kinerk of Seattle-based Cable, Langenbach, Kinerk & Bauer, to investigate the allegations that district leaders improperly steered millions of dollars of work to 1Energy Systems. The PUD has awarded four no-bid contracts worth nearly $15 million to Kaplan’s Seattle-based firm, which makes software for the energy industry. According to the report, the PUD created a job for Kaplan in large part so he could learn what he needed to know to make his company commercially viable. While still a district employee, he began negotiating a contract with the PUD on behalf of his company. Six weeks after leaving the utility in 2011, the PUD awarded the company a no-bid contract worth up to $800,000, allowing him to hire staff. Prior to that, he was 1Energy’s only employee. Since then, Kaplan has used the PUD contracts as stepping stones to at least five other contracts with major utilities, including
Puget Sound Energy. The report’s author seems at one point to say there actually was a problem with the no-bid nature of one of the contracts. Kinerk writes that the PUD adequately justified not putting the work out to bid “with the exception of the first contract” with 1Energy. That sentence implies the district was not justified in skipping the bidding process when it awarded that initial work. Later, the report only says that not putting the work out to bid “was not the wisest or most appropriate course of action,” suggesting that it did not violate district policy. Kinerk has not responded to multiple requests for clarification. “This is an example of unclear wording on the part of the investigator,” Spangler said in an email to The Daily Herald. “The actual finding is that the initial contract between 1Energy and the utility was executed without proper regard of utility policies about conflicts of
interest,” Spangler said. She said that staff will review the district’s ethics policy, which was last amended in 2007. During the investigation, the commission put on hold another no-bid contract with 1Energy, worth up to $3.8 million. The commissioners will likely take up that proposed deal in “the next couple months,” Vaughn said. Board members have asked PUD staff to brief them again on the contract for a refresher, she said. Rather than a refresher, retired PUD mid-level manager Ignacio Castro would prefer they reconsider the reasons for an ethics policy in the first place. The PUD’s relationship with 1Energy shows district leaders aren’t focused on ratepayers or voters, he said. “We haven’t had any reduction in rates. We’ve only had increases,” said Castro, an Edmonds resident. Dan Catchpole: 425339-3454; dcatchpole@ heraldnet.com; Twitter: @ dcatchpole.
squadron, he said. The squadron flew around the U.S. to visit radar stations, he said. They tested equipment at various bases by trying to sneak in without detection. “It was a very quiet tour of duty,” he said. Clarence left the military as a staff sergeant after his brother, Robert, was killed in combat in Korea. Clarence worked at Scott Paper in Everett for 37 years. “Shift work was the nuts,” he said. “It changed every week, days, graveyards.” For two decades, Vi, now 79, was an aide for the Everett School District, mostly in the kindergarten
and fifth-grade classrooms. The Lentzes raised two girls, Diane and Donna, and a boy, David. David Lentz, now 56, has two children. One of them, Andrew, 24, put together model airplane kits with his grandfather as a kid. The same kit planes hang over the Datsun 280Z in Clarence’s shop. It’s waiting on a new engine. According to his wife, he’s always been clever, quick at figuring out how to fix things. For each of his planes, Clarence started with a block of wood. There was no urgency, just a way to pass the time, he said. “I didn’t have any special tools,” he said. “I probably sawed and I had a sander.” Clarence takes the
planes down every once in a while for cleaning. He built the shop out back in the 1980s, when David got into racing cars, before he married. Clarence fashioned the planes’ wooden propellers so they’d turn in the wind. When the propellers started to stick, David Lentz made the aluminum replacements at his own shop, Sno-Lynn Machine, along the Mukilteo Speedway. Under way now in Clarence’s garage is a wooden P-51 Mustang. The wingspan is about 8 feet. Someday, the plan is for David to paint it and hang it up outside his business. The time is hard to come by, though, while he’s working seven days a week.
Clarence used to come and help with the machining. Together, father and son would watch restored World War II-era planes fly overhead around Paine Field. In early June, Clarence’s strawberries were ripening in his garden. Vi likes to quilt. They don’t travel anymore, she said, though they will drive to Darrington this summer to see daughter Diane. Vi estimates that Clarence finished the planes above the shop maybe 10 years ago. It’s hard to say now. Time becomes less important, she said. It goes by, and one day, they just stopped noticing so much. Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
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