GRDA Yields to Fallin on Plant Upgrades During Confrontational Board Meeting
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Logan Layden
Tougher environmental standards prompted the Grand River Dam Authority, a state-owned electric utility, to announce plans to spend $80 million to upgrades its existing coal power plants, and $300 million do build a new natural gas power plant.
StateImpact reported that Gov. Mary Fallin’s administration was trying to stop a scheduled vote on the plans at Wednesday’s GRDA board meeting.
And it did just that, as theĀ Tulsa World’sĀ Randy Krehbiel reports:
Grand River Dam Authority directors avoided open defiance of Gov. Mary Fallin by withdrawing from Wednesday’s board agenda consideration of a $300 million generating plant opposed by the governor.
The meeting was not without some post-July 4 fireworks, however.
But the fireworks didn’t come from GRDA board members. It was State Rep. Doug Cox, R-Grove, Ā flinging the insults.
“We all like to bad mouth Washington, D.C. We all like to bad mouth the president, Barack Obama,” said Cox. “We’ve got a little of D.C. here. We have a governor circumventing the Legislature with executive orders.”
Cox said he has asked a “neighbor” not to refer to the governor as “Mary Hussein Fallin.”
Fallin’s representative at the meeting, Finance Secretary Preston Doerflinger, says the governor will meet with the GRDA’s chief executive director next week.
