At last month’s Leelanau County Board of Commissioners regular session, Patty Lesch of Northport called on the board to investigate Joe DeFors, chair of the county’s Energy Futures Task Force, for allegedly “seeking personal gain in his position.”
The accusation centers on Leelanau County’s application for $1.5 million in funds through the Michigan Public Service Commission’s (MPSC) Renewable Energy and Electrification Infrastructure Enhancement and Development program, to be used to install two solar arrays at the government center campus in Suttons Bay.
The application was presented by the Energy Futures Task Force in February and says that DeFors and another task force member could be “call(ed) upon” as consultants in a project leadership role, where these two people would receive a $45 per hour salary for an estimated three hours of work per week.
