FBI Asking Questions About IURC Ethics Flap

It looks like somebody at the FBI is asking questions of folks with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the controversial hiring of the IURC's general counsel, Scott Storms, by Duke Energy, which resulted in quite an ethics blow up for the Daniels administration and led to the firing of IURC Chairman David Hardy by Gov. Daniels. Ed Feigenbaum reports in his latest edition of Indiana Legislative Insight:

[T]he FBI began interviewing a wide number of folks, principally at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, to gain some perspective on the recent ethics maelstrom that resulted in the termination of David Lott Hardy as IURC chair, and of former IURC administrator (and Indiana Department of Transportation Commissioner) Michael Reed as president of Duke Energy's Indiana subsidiary – along with former IURC general counsel Scott Storms from a Duke Indiana legal job. And this is not the first time this year, we hear that utility-related folks have been queried on matters related to politics and government.

Our understanding is that the Feds are clearly taking a good, close look at the matter . . . asking different questions of the various people contacted, and, from what we've been able to piece together, apparently heavily focused on finding evidence of any quid pro quo.

Feigenbaum also reports there is a previously unreported ethics flap involving Hardy that would have resulted in the immediate firing of almost any other state employee. "Tales are also emerging of some other interesting issues and incidents from the Hardy days, including a reprimand in his file over a compound unrelated ethics issue involving family, state resources, and Commission clout that some suggest would have meant the immediate ouster of most other state officials," he writes. Unless this investigation is being handled by the Public Integrity Section in Washington, expect it to go nowhere just like multiple honest services fraud cases that have been ignored in the past by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Indianapolis because it is run by political hacks. U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett won't touch Duke Energy. You can bet on it.