Chaos Grips OC's Green Power Agency, CEO Under Fire, Files Whistleblower Complaint

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VoiceOfOC

City leaders at the head of Orange County’s green power agency are moving to oust their controversial CEO, Brian Probolsky – a politically-connected power broker – just as he’s filed a whistleblower legal complaint alleging board members themselves are double-dealing to take over the agency.

Board member Dan Kalmick, also a Huntington Beach city councilman, said one of the key issues behind the move to discuss firing Probolsky is community trust.

“Residents and businesses don’t know who we are and other elected officials aren’t interested in doing business with us,” Kalmick said in a phone interview. “We tend to operate as a rather opaque organization.”

Questions surrounding the CEO have only continued to mount following the abrupt resignation of chief operating officer Antonia Castro-Graham last December, a price hike with the agency’s rollout after it was promised it would be cheaper than Southern California Edison, and most recently the California Public Utilities Commission fining the agency $1.9 million for failing to purchase additional electricity required by the state known as resource adequacy

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Just last week, Kathleen Treseder, an Irvine city council candidate and one of the leading activists who helped start the agency, wrote a widely circulated private letter alleging that Rafiei told her the agency was run by a group of political brokers including Probolsky and {Farrah} Khan, who Treseder says was promised political favors if Probolsky was kept as CEO.

Sigh, another Orange County dust-up wasting money while officials point fingers and call each other out.