Lobbyists Prove Influential In RI Energy Debate

Solving that business problem required untangling a political impasse.

For several years, the Republican governor and Democratic lawmakers had clashed over who should buy renewable power and how to compensate the buyer for the financial risks involved. Carcieri initially wanted to create a state-run collective to serve as the buyer, a plan lawmakers rejected.

Democrats then said the state's main power distributor, National Grid, should be the buyer, but Carcieri vetoed that legislation. Meanwhile, environmental advocates feared the state was focusing too much on an unproven offshore wind farm at the expense of other, smaller projects.

Deepwater hired lobbyist Robert Goldberg, a former lawmaker and the husband of Supreme Court Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg, and Jeffrey Grybowski, Carcieri's former chief-of-staff.

"Our goal was to build as much of a consensus as we could," said Jim Lanard, the company's managing director.

The coalition includes competitors. Cape Wind Associates LLC hired a lobbying firm to make sure National Grid could buy renewable power from renewable energy projects outside Rhode Island, so long as those projects provided an economic benefit for the state.