Seven Republican legislators have sent a letter to Gov. Bill Ritter urging the removal of Colorado Public Utilities Commission Chairman Ron Binz for alleged conflicts of interest in negotiating the Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act.
A series of e-mails, obtained by the Colorado Mining Association through an open-records request, showed that Binz participated in negotiations with Xcel Energy on cost-recovery portions of the act.
The mining association opposed the law, which gives Xcel financial incentives to replace aging coal plants to cut air pollution.
“Ultimately these policy decisions were not made by the chairman, but by the legislature itself,” Ritter said in a statement. “We understand that the legislators sending this letter were on the losing end of that vote.”
The legislators said they had “difficulty seeing how Chairman Binz can be an impartial judge in adjudicating a case from a bill he himself negotiated.”
The legislators who sent the letter are Sens. Ted Harvey, Dave Schult heis, Shawn Mitchell, Kevin Lundberg, Scott Renfroe, Al White and Mark Scheffel.
