Lawyer swap, lake contract review, energy worries: Ottawa faces big decisions Tuesday
From a change in legal counsel, revisiting a controversial lake remediation contract and trying to delay the closure of a coal-fired power plant, the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners is poised to make several big decisions at its next meeting Tuesday, Feb. 25.
Story summary
- The Ottawa County Board of Commissioners is set to approve a resolution on Tuesday urging Consumers Energy to delay the closure of the J.H. Campbell plant, which is slated for the end of May 2025.
- Commissioners also are poised to accept the resignation of its controversial corporate counsel Kallman Legal Group after the county saw seven lawsuits within two years.
- Another controversial contract between the county and Chester Township to remediate Crockery Lake is set to be reviewed because it’s legally unenforceable, according to an outside legal opinion. The board will look for the courts to weigh in.
OTTAWA COUNTY — From a change in legal counsel, revisiting a controversial lake remediation contract and trying to delay the closure of a coal-fired power plant, the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners is poised to make several big decisions at its next meeting Tuesday, Feb. 25.
Here’s a rundown of the anticipated highlights for Tuesday’s meeting, which is scheduled for 9 a.m. at Fillmore Complex administration building, 12130 Fillmore St., West Olive:
Sarah Leach
Mary Ellen Murphy and Sarah Leach break down what's happened and what's coming in Ottawa County.
Corporation counsel change
One of the biggest changes that will come to Ottawa County is a change in corporation counsel — the attorneys who serve as the chief legal advisor and who acts as the primary lawyer for the governing body, advising on legal matters and representing them in court when necessary.
On Jan. 3, 2023, the new far-right Ottawa Impact board majority made a series of controversial decisions, including firing longtime corporate counsel Doug Van Essen. It then hired Lansing-based Kallman Legal Group — then best known for representing an Owosso barber when legal action was brought against him for operating his haircutting business during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic against statewide orders.
Read More: Ottawa County meets again Tuesday. Here's what to expect after bombshell changes
Kallman then proceeded to assist the board through numerous controversial decisions and seven lawsuits brought against the board over the next 24 months, which have cost more than $1 million to handle the day-to-day operations from January 2023 through December 2024.
The county also has paid out more than $700,000 in settlements to date, with two lawsuits still ongoing.
Those decisions inspired a countermovement that ousted the OI majority in 2024, however, some OI commissioners remain.
At the time Kallman was hired, the board didn't open up a bidding process to allow other legal firms to compete. Perhaps more problematic, the two primary attorneys of Kallman Legal Group — David A. Kallman and Stephen P. Kallman — are related to then-board chair Joe Moss' business partner, Joel Kallman.
Joel Kallman, the nephew and cousin, respectively, of the lawyers at KLG, continues to operate three businesses with Moss: Freshphone, Eclarian and Afterburner. Despite the affiliation, Moss didn’t recuse himself in the vote to approve Kallman — which had no prior experience as a corporation counsel — as the county’s new attorney.
Moss, the founder of Ottawa Impact, lost his controlling majority on the board this year, however he and three other OI Republicans remain on the board currently.
Before OI lost its majority, commissioners approved a controversial contract with Kallman that paid the law firm nearly $250,000 upfront for legal services that presumably were to be delivered between January and September of this year.
The agenda for the upcoming Tuesday meeting includes a resolution that says KLG resigned as corporation counsel on Feb. 21. That same resolution poses to the board approval of the appointment of longtime municipal attorney Ron Bultje, of Grand Rapids law firm Dickinson Wright.
Bultje has worked with the county’s Parks and Recreation Commission as well as municipalities that include Port Sheldon Township and the city of Grand Haven.
Crockery Lake contract
The current board also is poised Tuesday to revisit a controversial contract for more than $560,000 from the county to Chester Township to “revitalize” Crockery Lake.
Read More: Ottawa County approves $563K contract to restore Crockery Lake as process faces criticism
The plan approved Dec. 10 already is in doubt after a legal challenge was filed Dec. 16, claiming the board exceeded its legal authority in paying the township the entire amount — despite being a five-year remediation plan — allegedly so that the former OI majority on the board could complete the deal before losing power.
To commissioners not in the former OI majority, the contract seemed sudden with little public process. They expressed deep concerns about the agreement’s language that gave the county little control over the project and increased liability should the lake cleanup go wrong.
Just weeks later, internal emails showed that the contract was crafted in less than two months, with only select officials involved in the process — including the contractor who was poised to receive the funds to complete the work.
The goal, according to emails from the former interim county administrator, was to ensure that new commissioners — set to be sworn in at the beginning of 2025 — would not be able to stop the project.
Read More: Emails: Crockery Lake contract was 'rushed,' intended to prevent new board from dismantling deal
“We want to make sure that once the funds are transferred on this project, that there's not the ability for the project to easily terminate or cease,” former interim county administrator Ben Wetmore wrote in a Dec. 3 email. “We intend to be bound to this agreement.”
Wetmore left at the end of the year after procuring a controversial $175,000 severance that also has been legally challenged in court.
Despite those intentions, the new board appears poised to reconsider the agreement after receiving an outside legal opinion from attorney Mike Bogren of Plunkett Cooney that the agreement is legally unenforceable; Bogren currently represents the county in the two remaining lawsuits against the board.
“It is our opinion the Dec. 10, 2024, agreement with Chester Township is invalid because the (board of commissioners) lacked the authority to enter into the agreement for two distinct reasons,” Bogren wrote in the opinion.
He said the prior board inappropriately “ceded authority to make improvements to county parks to the Parks Commission” and that the board exceeded the amount it can contribute to a lake improvement project under state law, which is 25%.”
Based on Bogren's opinion, the board will consider a resolution Tuesday to ask a court to rule on the legality of the contract.
The resolution reads "to authorize legal action for court ruling on the validity of the Agreement for the Care, Management, and Maintenance of Land Located at Crockery Lake (a/k/a) the Crockery Lake Agreement) approved and dated on or about Dec. 10-17, 2024."
Spring Lake limnologist Jennifer L. Jermalowicz-Jones, who has previous political ties to Moss, submitted a lake-remediation proposal through her company, Lake Restorative Services, to the Crockery Lake Association in October.
Public discussion on the Jones proposal began in earnest at the county’s finance committee on Dec. 3, however, the packet provided to the public only included a contract between Chester Township and the county — not Jones’ plan on which the contract was based.
The contract drew concerns from Joe Bush, the county’s water resources commissioner, and attorney Stacy Hissong, general counsel for the Michigan Association of County Drain Commissioners.
Hissong asked commissioners at the Dec. 3 committee meeting who would be the owner of the contract — the county or the township — because it was not immediately clear in the existing language.
She also pointed to the lack of having the Jones plan accompanying the contract.
“It says the county board of commissioners has authorized the Crockery Lake restoration project to be designed and implemented by the company, and that's known as the contract as the project,” Hissong said. “And so … I'm not aware of an authorization of that contract between the county and Lake Restorative Services, and it's not attached as the document that the township is administering. So I just had some questions about that.”
Hissong also said the contract lacked language addressing what happens if LRS is unable to secure the proper environmental permits.
“What if there's an unusual circumstance that a permit is not given, and so there can't be that type of work? This agreement doesn't provide for those funds being put back,” she said. “It doesn't have a timeframe.”
She also said she was “taken aback” by language in the contract between the municipalities that indemnified the township, a legal term where one party (the county) promises to compensate another party (the township) for losses, damages or liabilities.
Despite the numerous questions and concerns raised at the Dec. 3 committee meeting, the OI members who held majorities on all of the county’s committees at the time, voted to advance the contract to the full board.
Wetmore assured commissioners that the “minor” issues could be reworked and resolved prior to the board’s next full meeting scheduled for Dec. 10, where the full board approved it 6-5.
When the full board met, minority members expressed frustration over what they described as a problematic process that felt rushed.
“There are many members of this board who have not been part of this process, and this is the exact moment where we are being brought into this process,” Commissioner Doug Zylstra said at the Dec. 10 meeting.
Campbell plant closure
Although Ottawa County is not interested in getting into the public utility business, concerns continue to mount about the stability of the energy grid.
The concerns initially stemmed from an effort started by a small group of county residents that aimed to prevent Consumers Energy from decommissioning and demolishing the coal-fired J.H. Campbell Plant in Port Sheldon Township.
Read More: County poised to urge delay in closing Campbell as officials say plan likely won't change
Consumers’ leadership, however, has said the closure will not be delayed “unless there's reliability concern.”
“We take our responsibility for reliability seriously. And so when we hear concerns and the like, we want to address them. We want to explain them, and where there are concerns that are legitimate, we try to address them,” said Srikanth “Sri” Maddipati, vice president of electric supply with Consumers.
“We care. I don't want the power going out any more than you do. So we're all in this together.”
The Campbell Plant is Consumers' last — and largest — coal-fired plant in the state.
The plant, operating since 1962, was originally scheduled to close partially in 2030 and wholly in 2040. But the utility announced in 2021 it was moving the plan up by 15 years for an operations end date of May 31, 2025.
Read More: Consumers Energy reaches agreement to close Campbell plant, end utility's coal use by 2025
The utility seeks to end coal use altogether by 2025 as part of its goal to achieve carbon neutrality.
Since the announcement, Consumers has been actively preparing the plant for "full retirement," a spokesperson said last year.
"The complex will officially go into retirement with an aim to go cold and dark after 2025," said former Consumers spokesperson Kristen Van Kley. "In 2026 and on, the complex will be demolished with a plan to restore the site over time."
Even with the assurances, a handful of townships within Ottawa County have passed resolutions requesting that Consumers delay the Campbell closure:
- Blendon
- Chester
- Georgetown
- Grand Haven
- Jamestown
- Polkton
- Zeeland
The Ottawa County Board of Commissioners is poised to join that group at the Tuesday meeting.
Consumers representatives appeared before the board Feb. 11 to reassure commissioners that the company’s plan and timeline are sound and that the grid is reliable.
Dena Isabell, stakeholder engagement manager at Consumers, outlined assets within the company’s portfolio, including the Zeeland and Covert generating stations. She said those added 1,200 megawatts to help offset the planned closure of Campbell later this year.
The decommissioning process for the plant is expected to take about five years to complete, she said.
“The construction timeline is about five years from start to finish. That includes all of our remediation and restoration. We're going to go four feet below grade, and then full restoration so that it can be reused and repurposed. So that's really going to be that focus,” she said.
Commissioners, however, pointed to two separate reports — from MISO as well as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC — that gave them concerns over the energy grid’s reliability once the Campbell is taken offline.
“There's an elephant in the room, and I just want to make sure that we're fully addressing this,” said Commissioner Jim Barry. “I still don't feel like I really have a complete thought process on how MISO works with the grid and Consumers works with MISO and the grid, but … they've voiced some concern about a hasty transition closing the coal coal plants … that renewables are the future, but that we're not there yet. How would you respond to that?”
Maddipati said he understands that residents and stakeholders have concerns about the future of the energy grid, but that Consumers will continue to provide reliable service.
“I think the message I would say is that we're prepared for this,” Maddipati said. “And there are resources coming online or that we've already had come online to support this. Concerns about reliability we take seriously, and we're working with all the different kinds of overlapping stakeholders and regulators teams to address them.”
He said the company has procured incremental battery capacity as well, with the first one coming online mid-2025, and that another 400 megawatts of batteries will come online over the next three years.
“There are replacements that we have implemented in terms of replacing the energy, and what we were getting from Campbell with newer technologies and units and different technologies that are perfectly more flexible and annual,” he said.
Maddipati appeared on WGHN's "Good Morning Grand Haven" on Monday, Feb. 24, where he said despite the local municipalities' concerns, "it doesn't change the plan."
Meanwhile, Port Sheldon Township has said it’s already moving forward toward a future without the Campbell.
“We have been told explicitly that that is not an option because Consumers is bound by the (the Michigan Public Service Commission) and their integrated resource plan,” said Mike Sabatino, Port Sheldon Township supervisor.
Sabatino said his township — which notably has not passed a resolution urging a delay in closure — understands the fear of change, but that local officials understand the decision making and how Consumers and residents will move forward.
“I understand the sentiment — this is something that's been here for 60 years — but it's been explained to us,” he said. “This is a $600 million decision for their shareholders. Plants are very expensive.”
Sabatino pointed out that even with the local units of government urging a delay, ultimately the facility and the land is owned by Consumers.
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“There's nothing that we can do to prohibit them from closing; there's no ordinance that we can pass or anything like that,” he said. “They've already agreed to this closure timeline.”
Sabatino said the township recently completed a five-year master plan, which found that “the implications for tax revenue turned out not to be that bad at all.”
“We're in very good shape with that,” he said.
Sabatino pointed to the township’s master plan as a way to incorporate preferences of residents on future purposes of the site.
“(Consumers) have not indicated they're disposing of any of that property, but they have committed to work cooperatively with the community and take that input into account as they make those decisions,” he said.
— Sarah Leach is the executive editor of the Ottawa News Network. Contact her at sleach@ottawanewsnetwork.org. Follow her on Twitter @ONNLeach.
