A Halloween letter from Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond was delivered this week to Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner, months after Commissioner Bob Anthony had complained publicly about alleged wrongdoing over the Winter Storm Uri securitization and how it was developed.
And it was no prank on the part of the Attorney General. Indeed, it was a threatening response in which Drummond answered Anthony’s allegation that a utility company executive colluded with a former Deputy Treasurer for Policy and Debt Management. Anthony had previously cited emails showing such.
Drummond wanted to see them.
“However, if the emails do not exist, I respectfully request that you resist making further inflammatory comments about any unsubstantiated theory of collusion between the utility companies and state employees,” stated Drummond in the Oct. 30 letter.
“Additionally, I believe that an email retracting these misstatements will greatly benefit our ultimate recovery from the bad actors whom we have identified,” added the Attorney General.
In filings made public, Anthony responded by informing Drummond, “Extensive quotations from the emails you only now request were first made public in my 74-page “Report Card on Securitization: Anatomy of a State Government Screw-up” filed on September 22, 2022 in the Winter Storm “Uri” securitizaton cases for OG&E, ONG and PSO.”
Anthony further reminded Drummond that he gave him a copy of the filing when Drummond was still a candidate. The commissioner informed Drummond that he met with two of Drummond’s assistant Attorneys General after Drummond was sworn into office.
“I am pleased that more than a year after the evidence of possible wrongdoing was first exposed, someone is finally interested in “the rest of the story.” I hope it is not too late,”responded Commissioner Anthony.
Anthony said the emails he had as evidence were obtained from “outside sources” and that his official requests to the utilities and the Corporation Commission on the very subject “still languish in the lurch.”
Anthony had previously sought communications and other background information from the Commission’s Public Utilities Division, but then PUD Director Brandy Wreath directed his employees to no longer respond to Anthony’s public documents requests.
In his response to the Attorney General’s demanding letter, Anthony said there were additional emails beyond those already cited in his footnotes “that appear to show OCC employees colluding with utility ccompany staff to massively inflate the estimates given to lawmakers”of what the average Oklahoma natural gas customer would owe from storm Uri.
He encouraged the Attorney General to obtain electronic communications of the Deputy Treasurer for Policy and Debt Management in 2021, adding thatt “they would likely also be of great interest to your investigators.”