{"id":2027,"date":"2011-05-07T15:27:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T21:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=2027"},"modified":"2011-05-08T14:05:36","modified_gmt":"2011-05-08T20:05:36","slug":"activist-john-blair-shows-98-cents-worth-of-outrage-at-duke-energy-annual-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/?p=2027","title":{"rendered":"Activist ( John Blair ) shows 98 cents worth of outrage at Duke Energy annual meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 6, 2011-by John Downey in the\u00a0Charlotte Business Journal<\/a><\/p>\n

Indiana activist\u00a0John Blair<\/strong> provided the most dramatic moment at\u00a0Duke Energy<\/a><\/a>\u2019s annual meeting Thursday, tearing his dividend check to pieces to express his outrage with CEO\u00a0Jim Rogers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John Blair, president of Valley Watch, Inc. caused a stir at the Duke Energy annual meeting on May 5, in Charlotte, NC when he suggested that Duke CEO, James Rogers resign because he mislead the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission under oath when he told them he had had no ex parte communication with the IURC regarding Dukes nefarious Edwardsport coal plant.<\/p><\/div>\n

It cost him 98 cents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a significant amount of stock,\u201d says Blair, whose Valley Watch organization focuses on health and environmental issues in Indiana. \u201cI saved my dividend check this year for just that purpose.”<\/p>\n

Blair owns four shares of Duke stock. He bought the stock in 1985 \u2014 in Public Service Indiana. That was the first utility Rogers worked for as CEO. The stock was cheap because PSI was dogged by a $2.8 billion debacle in the unfinished Marble Hill nuclear plant.<\/p>\n

Not an investment<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, Blair tore his dividend check at PSI\u2019s annual meeting then to protest the Marble Hill plant.<\/p>\n

He says he has not torn his check since. But he held on to the stock as successive mergers made him an investor in Cinergy Corp. and ultimately Duke.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t buy it as an investment,\u201d he says. He bought it to be able to talk at the annual meeting of the utility.<\/p>\n

He talked Thursday, calling on Rogers to resign. It was the\u00a0most confrontational exchange in almost two hours of questions Rogers submitted to from shareholders and activists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cost overruns<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Blair stands by his accusation that Rogers did not testify truthfully to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission last November. Rogers was questioned about influence peddling and an ethics scandal surrounding the hiring of a lawyer and cost overruns at Duke\u2019s proposed Edwardsport coal-gasification plant \u2014 now expected to cost $2.88 billion to build.<\/p>\n

Blair insists Rogers testified there were no \u201cex parte\u201d meetings with regulators to the plant. (Ex parte simply means meetings held with one side in a dispute that the other parties did not participate in.)<\/p>\n

There were such meetings. Rogers himself met with the commission chairman that spring for breakfast.<\/p>\n

Rogers, whose cool demeanor slipped toward frosty during his exchange with Blair, said he testified there were \u201cno inappropriate ex parte meetings.\u201d The breakfast meeting was not held to plead for approval of higher costs for the plant.<\/p>\n

Multiple firings<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Rogers says it was just an informational meeting to warn the commission chairman that Duke was about to make a filing that said costs were increasing. The meeting, he says, was appropriate.<\/p>\n

Press accounts from the November hearing all say Rogers said there was no inappropriate contact. Blair says that\u2019s just \u201cparsing words.\u201d He contends any meeting any Duke executive had one-on-one with a commissioner would violate rules against ex parte meetings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

James Rogers, Duke Energy CEO (C) share pleasantries with adversaries, Mike Mullett (L) and Jerry Polk (R) shortly after he told the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission that he had had no ex parte communication with the Commission concerning his Edwardsport debacle on November 3, 2010. Photo \u00a9 2011 John Blair<\/p><\/div>\n

The chairman, David Hardy, was ultimately fired by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels over his handling of conflict-of-interest questions when Duke hired the commission\u2019s counsel last summer.<\/p>\n

Duke fired its Indiana president and the former commission counsel. And a top Duke executive in Charlotte resigned when emails between him and Hardy raised questions about whether regulators were too cozy with Duke.<\/p>\n

Final observation<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Blair said Rogers should resign because of those problems. Rogers ignored Blair\u2019s call for his resignation and defended both his testimony and Duke\u2019s handling of the Edwardsport costs issues.<\/p>\n

After Blair finished, Rogers dryly observed, \u201cYou probably didn\u2019t own many shares of stock if you tear up your dividend check like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On that, at least, Rogers was clearly correct.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 6, 2011-by John Downey in the\u00a0Charlotte Business Journal Indiana activist\u00a0John Blair provided the most dramatic moment at\u00a0Duke Energy\u2019s annual meeting Thursday, tearing his dividend check to pieces to express his outrage with CEO\u00a0Jim Rogers. It cost him 98 cents. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,66,44,67,61,40],"class_list":["post-2027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-duke-energy","tag-duke-scandal","tag-iurc","tag-jim-rogers","tag-john-blair","tag-mitch-daniels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2027"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2039,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2027\/revisions\/2039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/valleywatch.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}