U.S. Senator Reid, son combine for China firm's desert plant
Fri, Aug 31 05:06 AM EDT
By Marcus Stern
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - U.S. Senator Harry Reid recognized nine years ago that
connections between his official duties and the lobbying activities of
his relatives could lead to ethical questions.
In 2003, the Nevada
Democrat publicly banned relatives from lobbying him or his staff after
newspaper reports showed that Nevada industries and institutions
routinely turned to Reid's sons or son-in-law for representation.
Now, questions
surrounding family ties are flaring again in Nevada around the Senate
majority leader. He and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an
effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5
billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada
desert.
Reid has been one of
the project's most prominent advocates, helping recruit the company
during a 2011 trip to China and applying his political muscle on behalf
of the project in Nevada. His son, a lawyer with a prominent Las Vegas
firm that is representing ENN, helped it locate a 9,000-acre
(3,600-hectare) desert site that it is buying well below appraised value
from Clark County, where Rory Reid formerly chaired the county
commission.
Craig Holman, a
lobbyist for the non-partisan advocacy group Public Citizen, said the
senator is dealing with "an iffy ethical landscape" because of the
family connections and should recuse himself from the project. "Is this
just happening because ... it benefits the Reid family, or did Harry
Reid actually believe in this?" Holman said.
The senator has
supported numerous clean energy projects in Nevada. Rory Reid cites
energy as one of his specialty areas at the law firm.
The two Reids deny discussing the ENN project.
"I
have never discussed the project with my father or his staff," said
Rory Reid. Kristen Orthman, a spokeswoman for the senator, said he had
not discussed the project with his son.
The Langfang,
China-based ENN Energy Group hopes to build what would be the largest
solar energy complex in America. The site chosen with Rory Reid's
guidance is in tiny Laughlin, Nevada, a gambling town of 7,300 along the
Colorado River, 90 miles south of Las Vegas.
County officials have
said that they were so thrilled to recruit a company to the area, with
the prospect of thousands of new local jobs, that they were eager to
negotiate.
ENN is headed by
Chinese energy tycoon Wang Yusuo, who made a fortune estimated by Forbes
at $2.2 billion distributing natural gas in China. Wang escorted Reid
and a delegation of nine other U.S. senators on a tour of the company's
clean energy operations in Langfang, and Reid featured Wang as a speaker
at his 4th annual National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas last year.
NEVADA'S LARGEST LAW FIRM
To
advance the Nevada project, ENN retained the state's largest and most
prestigious law firm - Lionel Sawyer & Collins, where Rory Reid
works. It is headed by Richard Bryan, a former Nevada attorney general,
governor and member of the U.S. Senate.
Rory Reid faced a
one-year cooling off period from lobbying the Clark County commission
after leaving his post in January 2011, and Bryan took the lead on ENN's
negotiations with the county.
Since the one-year
ban expired, Rory Reid has been ENN's primary representative before the
county, according to Steve Sisolak, the board's vice chairman.
Rory Reid
acknowledged representing ENN at both the county and state levels since
January. He declined to discuss the project otherwise.
Two months after Harry Reid's China trip, Lionel Sawyer registered ENN
Mohave Energy LLC as an American subsidiary of the Chinese company. The
firm negotiated with the county to buy the land rather than lease it, as
the county's staff had recommended.
In December, Clark
County commissioners voted unanimously to sell up to 9,000 acres of
public land to the subsidiary at pennies on the dollar.
The deal spurred local controversy. Separate appraisals valued the land
at $29.6 million and $38.6 million. The commission agreed to sell it to
ENN for $4.5 million.
The county did build in certain conditions before the project could
begin, including milestones for jobs creation and investment. ENN also
must assure the county that it has a power company willing to commit to
buying energy from the solar farm. But in the eight months since the
commissioners approved the deal, no utility has signed a power purchase
agreement.
However, Harry Reid stepped up again.
The
Democrat recently used an online discussion related to his annual
energy summit for an as-yet unsuccessful effort to pressure Nevada's
largest power company, NV Energy, to sign up as ENN's first customer.
In the July 30 discussion, Reid said the project "would start tomorrow
if NV Energy would purchase the power." The utility controls "95
percent of all of the electricity that is produced in Nevada and they
should go along with this." Reid's online comments were first reported
by the Las Vegas Review Journal.
The power company
responded by saying it had exceeded its minimum renewable energy
requirements both last year and this year, though it would consider
buying power from ENN in the future. A spokesman for NV Energy declined
to discuss the matter further.
Bryan, the head of the law firm, did not return repeated phone calls and emails.
An official with ENN in Langfang did not respond to emails.
In 2007, after a
controversy over the number of lawmaker relatives engaged in lobbying,
Congress passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, sharply
restricting the lobbying activities of close relatives of members of
Congress.
The law only applies
to registered lobbyists and Rory Reid is not registered as a federal
lobbyist in Washington or a state lobbyist in Nevada, according to
records in both jurisdictions.
(Reporting By Marcus Stern; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson, Martin Howell)
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