Southern Company’s 5 Seconds of Silence Turns Into Loud Explosion
“After [the CDLU] pointed this out, Kerr took a long pause before going full Sarah Huckabee Sanders: ‘We reviewed the information. I have no concerns about anything inappropriate.'” The Root
In our call with Jim Kerr, the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Southern Company, after he said that Southern would do nothing about holding Balch & Bingham accountable for alleged unscrupulous and racist conduct, we asked him directly about the Jeffrey H. Wood matter.
Jeffrey H. Wood was a lobbyist for Balch & Bingham and was lobbying on Capitol Hill in 2016 about the North Birmingham EPA matter at the same time as the bribery scheme in North Birmingham against the EPA was happening. Former State Representative Oliver Robinson, two Balch partners, and a Drummond executive were indicted in the scheme.
But Wood was not lobbying on behalf of Drummond. Wood was lobbying for Alabama Power, whose CEO, General Counsel, and VP of Government Affairs are all former Balch & Bingham partners. Alabama Power is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Southern Company.
At first, Kerr said he wasn’t sure what we were asking, but after repeating the question with reminders, he took 5 seconds to respond with a canned legal answer: “It’s, um… I told you that I looked into the information provided me. We reviewed the information and I have no concerns about anything inappropriate.”
Even The Root noted Kerr’s 5 seconds of silence:
Kerr responded, “We do not see a place to step into [the Robinson scandal].” That rings hollow considering that Wood, Balch’s point lobbyist for Southern, was lobbying on Superfund policy at the time on behalf of Southern. In fact, Wood has specifically recused himself (pdf) from any matters at the ENRD pertaining to the 35th Avenue site, suggesting that he was specifically lobbying about the site. After [the CDLU] pointed this out, Kerr took a long pause before going full Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “We reviewed the information. I have no concerns about anything inappropriate.”
But there is more to the story.
While Wood was lobbying about North Birmingham during the second and third quarters of 2016 on behalf of Southern Company’s subsidiary, right in the middle of that time frame, there was a critical meeting on Capitol Hill.
As Mother Jones reported last month:
In June 2016, several months after the letter was sent, [Brandon M.] Middleton [of then-U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions staff] contacted the liaison again to request a meeting with Heather McTeer-Toney, the administrator for EPA’s Region 4, which includes Alabama, and Mathy Stanislaus, an EPA assistant administrator who was further up the pecking order at the agency. Middleton sent an agenda for the meeting that cited five “issues of concern”—which included critiques of the testing methods used by the EPA to determine blame for the pollution. Middleton, who did not return a request for comment, told the EPA that Sessions, Shelby, and Palmer were all scheduled to attend. When the EPA officials later showed up at Sessions’ office, none of the lawmakers were present. Instead, the EPA officials met with members of Sessions’ staff, who aggressively argued against the EPA adding the [North Birmingham] 35th Avenue site to its priority list.
Wood appears to have his fingerprints on this debacle to suppress African-Americans.
Now the concerns escalate to 2017 and we hear a loud explosion.
Appointed acting Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, Jeffrey H. Wood was one of the first appointments made only hours after President Trump took office.
In 2017, did Wood, as a federal official, have any contact with Steven McKinney, Joel I. Gilbert or any associates at Balch & Bingham as the ongoing investigation was happening, after Oliver Robinson was indicted in June, or after McKinney and Gilbert were indicted in September?
The Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice needs to take a thorough look.
