October 29, 2011 07:11 PM UTC

The "Boulder Memo"--Smoking Gun or Forgery?

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• by: Colorado Pols

A potentially explosive story out of Boulder today, very late in the election season but enough to leave interests up there pretty upset with one another–assuming, of course, that the key evidence in the story is not a “forgery.”

A two-page memo purporting to detail the strategy by Xcel Energy to win the city’s municipalization election–Issues 2B and 2C in the city of Boulder–paints a picture of a large and very politically-savvy corporation determined “at any cost” to defeat the push to create a municipally-owned utility in Boulder. The memo describes a campaign beginning in March of 2011 to undermine support for municipalization, with a “preliminary budget” for the nominally Democratic-aligned Kenney Group of nearly three million dollars. Working with “community leader” and political consultant Matt Moseley (retainer: $125,000), and the civic group Boulder Tomorrow (budget: “up to $2 million”), the document outlines three scenarios for dealing with 2B and 2C, both before and after passage: “Stick,” “Carrot,” and “Tier 3” (see above).

Read the whole memo for yourself here, courtesy the Boulder daily paper.

Xcel, for its part, categorically denies the veracity of this memo and asserts it is a forgery. As evidence, they point to a referenced wind power agreement that Xcel didn’t propose to Boulder until well after this memo was allegedly written. Our sources say that’s hogwash, and that Xcel certainly could have had that deal in its bag of contingencies last spring.

Either way, Boulderites will be particularly interested in the appearances of David Miller and City Councilman Ken Wilson in this memo, the latter having denied any involvement with Xcel after another council member demanded an investigation of his private business relationships with the utility. David Miller, as locals know, went on to become the chair of the Boulder Smart Energy Coalition, the chief opposition front group against 2B and 2C. Back in August, Miller claimed that Xcel “was not involved” in BSEC’s creation. We assume Miller has dropped his further defense that BSEC has “received no contributions” from Xcel after the $240,000 check from Xcel to the group reported yesterday. The same applies to Moseley, who tried to assert in August that nobody involved in this effort was associated, you know, with anybody else, and he was just innocently telling interested parties to talk to Miller’s group while he was retained by Xcel.

The weekend before the election, it’s safe to say these pretenses have been dropped.

Bottom line: Miller’s role with BSEC is consistent with the memo. Moseley’s role is consistent. The Kenney Group’s is consistent. It was reported yesterday that spending in opposition to 2B and 2C is approaching $900,000: note that’s just reportable election expenses, folks, which doesn’t include money spent before the measure was on the ballot. So the outsized piles of money this memo purports to have outlined in the spring appear to not be far off either.

There’s really nothing out of place in this memo, though if true, it makes a whole bunch of already dubious statements from well-paid consultants in defense of Xcel’s campaign to squash municipalization in Boulder…well, it makes them demonstrably false. And while that’s not illegal, we wouldn’t want to be any of these players answering questions when the dust settles.