ERIC BRYANT, Office of the Public Advocate: "...The rules broken by Petitioners and their counterparties to the pending transactions are not about missing a deadline or failing to three-hole punch da…

ERIC BRYANT, Office of the Public Advocate:

"...The rules broken by Petitioners and their counterparties to the pending transactions are not about missing a deadline or failing to three-hole punch data responses. They're rules of substance, integrity, and ethics."

Tony Buxton for Industrial Energy Consumer Group:

"...It makes this kind of proceeding into something other than a legal proceeding. And that's wrong. We realize there's a lot at stake for some people here, but we have a process for that to come forward and people are bound by what they say and what they do. And we are not only disappointed, we are shocked that this kind of thing could happen at this Commission. And we think the only remedy because of the taint in the Petitioners' filing of incorporating comments that the Petitioner knew were not proper and those having gone to the Commission already, the only remedy is to require those to be rejected and to dismiss this case. If the parties want to go out and put together another deal and come back with another deal, that's their privilege. But to reward them by changing this proceeding to somehow accommodate what they have done here is exactly the wrong thing to do. Thank you.”

ALAN STONE, Skelton, Taintor & Abbott

MR. STONE: "I've been practicing law before this Public Utilities Commission for 37 years, and it's one of the most favorite things I've ever done in my life until this week. I have never seen an abuse of process like has occurred in this case in my history of practice before this Commission, perhaps with the exception of a person who was convicted of a crime.

Administrative agencies, according to the United States Supreme Court, are based on concepts of fair play. We come to this agency with a trust that this Commission and the staff are going to require the parties to play by the rules and play on a level playing field and not proceed in a case in a manner that all they seek to do is win at all costs regardless of what they do. It is so clear what has happened here, as aptly summarized by Eric, by Charlie, and by Tony. It literally makes me sick.

There is no way that we can proceed in this case. The record is tainted. We can't just simply re-open the record to allow them to change the deal when they want to change the deal because they're losing. I mean, to reward, as Tony said, the Petitioners and First Wind and APUC would be terrible, in a word. It would undermine the confidence in this agency, and what this Commission is trying to prevent with regard to this deal is undermine the confidence in the market. You don't undermine the confidence in the agency.

This is only one group of people's fault. It was a deliberate action. If this were a court of law, this case would be dismissed in a moment. You can't get to a jury five minutes before and say, oops, I screwed up, I should have put more evidence in and then inflict some conduct that causes a mistrial and expect to start all over again. No court would allow that. They would dismiss it with prejudice, and that would be the end of it. And they would impose sanctions and serious ones.

...So the way forward is to simply say no, this deal we've been looking at, this transaction, is only an economic deal to benefit First Wind and Emera. It's not a reliability issue. The question is harm. Well, we know how harmed we're going to be now. If you can't trust these people to comply with the fundamental rules of this Commission, how can you trust them to do anything in the ratepayers' interest? They've proven this point. Mr. Harwood can have all his responses to everything that we've said, but I think the truth will shine through clearly and does. So I join on behalf of Houlton Water Company with the motions that have been made to dismiss this proceeding with prejudice and, in addition, so the record is clear, to strike Petitioners' comments and exceptions in their entirety. If the -- when I say dismiss with prejudice, if there's some other deal that comes together later on that is significantly different from this deal and that is not just a re-packaging to get around a denial, then maybe this Commission might look at it, maybe they won't. But that's for a future date. Right now the remedy is to dismiss it with prejudice.

Thank you.”