By Phillip Lucas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 16, 2010; B01
Hundreds of District homeowners signed up for free household energy audits last year through the D.C. Department of the Environment -- some hoping to cut their utility bills, some to be "greener" and some because it was free.
But this month, instead of the energy assessments they were promised, more than 100 homeowners received letters saying that liens had been filed on their property because the city never paid a contractor for doing the work.
Patuxent Environmental Group Energy Solutions sent letters to participants in the audit program telling them that the city was required to pay the cost of the audits -- about $310 each, according to the D.C. Department of the Environment. The letter said that because the city hadn't paid Patuxent, liens would be filed against residents' homes to recoup the costs. The letters, signed by Patuxent's vice president, JoAnn Spence, also directed all questions to the D.C. Department of the Environment.
"Honestly, I just laughed," said Emily Swartz, a Chevy Chase resident whose audit was done in January. "I'm sure it's just a last-ditch effort to get paid."
D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) didn't find the letters amusing.
In a response to Patuxent on Aug. 9, she called the company's action harassment and questioned the legal basis on which it had acted.
Matthew Cooper, the company's chief executive, responded to Cheh's letter the next day, saying that the company had not actually filed liens and that Patuxent is in a valid contract dispute with the Department of the Environment over the audits.
The Fairfax-based company said it had a contract with the District. What it did not have, according to Department of the Environment officials, were purchase orders from the agency authorizing the audits it had done.
Christophe Tulou, the department's director, said the problem with the contractors arose when the department switched the source of the audit program's funding.
The program was initially funded by the Sustainable Energy Trust Fund, established by the Clean and Affordable Energy Act of 2008. The legislation included a surcharge on Pepco bills to temporarily fund the program.
Last fall, the Department of the Environment sought to use federal stimulus money for the program because funding was set to expire at the end of fiscal 2009. Tulou said that the agency has worked since late September to ensure the availability of stimulus funding for the program but that it was waiting for government approval to use stimulus funds that way when the audits were performed.
"That's literally this week getting resolved, so we'll have people out doing audits soon," Tulou said.
The agency has secured $980,000 in federal funding, enough to complete more than 3,000 audits, according to Taresa Lawrence, the agency's acting deputy director.
Tulou said it was too soon to comment on the issue of Patuxent's reimbursement.
Contractors working on the audit program, which included Patuxent and Elysian Energy, based in Silver Spring, were not authorized by the agency to perform audits after Sept. 30, 2009, because funding for their reimbursement had not been secured, Tulou said.
"We did 143 audits before we realized they weren't going to be paying us," Cooper said Monday. "We worked into the first week of February and then stopped."
Tulou said contractors were most likely working from an old list of homeowners such as Swartz, who signed up for audits in 2009 but didn't have them completed by January. Swartz signed up for an audit on the Department of the Environment's Web site in August 2009, was contacted by Patuxent on Sept. 9, 2009, and was visited for an audit Jan. 7.
Jim Conlon, president of Elysian, said his company performed more than 100 audits and had to pay more than $100,000 out of pocket for the work. Conlon said Elysian did not dispute the city's nonpayment, however.
Both companies bid again in May for work with the District's audit program. Elysian was one of three companies awarded a contract in June. Patuxent was not.
The switch in funding sources caused a backlog of about 1,800 audits. Additionally, homeowners who were audited without authorization and got letters from Patuxent instead of their results were contacted by the department and will be visited again, Tulou said.
In her Aug. 9 letter, Cheh asked Patuxent to immediately write to homeowners to withdraw the initial letter and apologize. She is considering pursuing legislative hearings "and, if necessary, a legislative investigation," she wrote.
"I hope that they quickly act to repair the damage that they've done," she said in an interview Aug. 9.
Patuxent drafted a follow-up letter that it planned to send to audited homeowners, Cooper said. In response to what Cheh had written Aug. 9, Cooper wrote Aug. 10 that "no liens have been placed on homes, and as stated in the letter to homeowners, [Patuxent] has no further plans to pursue that avenue at this time."
In a letter the department sent to homeowners, Tulou said Patuxent has no legal basis to place liens on people's homes. He told homeowners that the D.C. attorney general's office would intervene if any liens were filed.
Kathleen Saunders, who lives on 12th Street NW near Shepherd Park, said the letter she received from Patuxent on Aug. 7 was more confusing than upsetting. She'd like to see the letter of apology Cheh suggested go a step further, to address the confusion over the audits.
"What I want is something in writing that says there's not a lien on my house," she said, "since I have something in writing that says there is one."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/15/AR2010081502853.html?sub=AR
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