A new group formed by anti-wind and solar activists in Michigan has teamed up with a Republican political consulting firm that also represents an oil and gas pipeline company to fight legislation that would make it easier to site and build renewable energy projects in the state.
Our Home, Our Voice (OHOV) is a 501(c)(4) organization incorporated in the State of Michigan earlier this year.
“Our Home, Our Voice is a pure grassroots coalition of local officials and private citizens dedicated to protecting Michigan’s long-standing right of local regulation of land use,” Kevon Martis, OHOV’s co-founder and a long-time anti-wind activist, said last month in a presentation to the Michigan House Energy, Communications and Technology Committee.
“OHOV is funded entirely by rural residents and receives no industry support of any kind,” Martis’s presentation also said.
Wolverine Pipe Line Co. is jointly controlled by the Mobil Pipe Line Company, Sunoco Pipeline L.P., and several smaller companies, according to an annual report filed with federal regulators in April by Mobil Pipe Line, which is a unit of ExxonMobil. Energy Transfer also lists Wolverine Pipe Line Co. as a subsidiary in SEC filings.
OHOV is opposing legislation – House Bills 5120 and 5121– recently passed by Democrats in the Michigan House that would help streamline development of renewable energy projects by providing the Michigan Public Service Commission with more control over approval of new wind and solar farms. Democrats said the bills were amended prior to the Michigan House vote to allow for more local control over renewable energy projects in order to address local concerns.
OHOV took credit for writing resolutions adopted by some Michigan townships and counties calling on state lawmakers to maintain local control over wind and solar projects in a September newsletter posted on the group’s website.
In addition, the name “Chelsea Yi” is listed as the “Author” in the document properties of instructions on “How to download & pass the local resolution in your township” linked from OHOV’s Take Action page. A “Chelsea Yi” also works as a senior accounting manager for the MRG.
MRG supported earlier legislation that would have ceded local control over some pipeline projects to state regulators, legislation that would have benefited the firm’s clients in the oil and gas industry at the time.
In 2005, Donna Halinski, then an account manager for MRG, wrote an op-ed supporting legislation that provided state regulators with the final say on pipeline projects “placed in limited access highways on state land.”
Halinski wasn’t shy about the fact that the 2005 legislation would benefit the Wolverine Pipe Line Co. by enabling it to bypass local opposition to one of its projects from the City of Lansing. Her op-ed did not state that Wolverine Pipeline Co. was a client of MRG. Halinski said she was writing on behalf of a coalition of industry groups that supported that legislation, and listed the Associated Petroleum Industries of Michigan and Michigan Electric and Gas Association among the bill’s supporters.
Halinski left MRG in 2020 and started her own consulting firm.
Our Home, Our Voice co-founder Kevon Martis is listed as a senior policy fellow by a coal industry-backed group in Virginia