Chris Perry Column: The Illusion Of Transparency

Today was supposed to be the day.

Well, I guess if we are being technical: Tuesday, January 14th was supposed to be the day.

That was the day the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) was originally scheduled to participate in a joint meeting with the Nantucket Select Board to answer questions from island residents regarding the Vineyard Wind blade failure.

But as we know, that meeting was postponed until today because BSEE staff members said they were “overwhelmed and needed more time to prepare”.

On Nantucket, the only thing worse than scheduling a meeting in January is rescheduling one for February.

Nevertheless, the community is here and ready to go but where’s the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement?

Despite having even more time to cull through the questions and choreograph their response for the rescheduled webinar, the BSEE opted to cancel.

Not only does it look bad. It smells bad.

To get a sense of the shenanigans going on here, one must go back to Christmas Eve when most of us were hanging stockings with care. That is when the Nantucket Select Board dropped an announcement via Town E-News advising the community that they had six days to submit written questions for the co-hosted webinar scheduled for January 14th.

To compound the confusion, Select Board chair Brooke Mohr admitted, “There will be no back and forth. BSEE only agreed to come and participate in the webinar if questions were submitted in writing and in advance…”

With that in mind, my first written question is: Why would the Select Board agree to co-host a meeting with the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement and allow the BSEE to dictate the terms and conditions?

Clearly, these preconditions choke the potential for any meaningful dialogue surrounding the blade failure on July 13^th, 2024. By capitulating to these demands, it restricts the community from receiving the information it deserves in a give-and-take public setting. Ultimately, it puts Nantucket at a disadvantage.

Postponing the first meeting because “they were overwhelmed with over 500 questions” simply makes no sense.

They had over two weeks to hand-pick the questions they wanted to address. That’s more than enough time to fine-tune and coordinate their message which was set to be aired in a controlled environment. By postponing, the BSEE along with the Select Board and Cultural Heritage Partners looked more like Herb Steeple, Charles Van Doren, and the Quiz Show scandal of the 1950s than trusted officials willing to openly address questions from the community.

With a second bite at the apple via today’s rescheduled meeting which allowed over a month for the triumvirate to rehearse all answers, what happened?

“Change in the Washington administration…”

That’s weak sauce.

The election was held in November.

In December - and well after the election - the Select Board and the BSEE announced the January 14th public webinar to the Nantucket community knowing Trump was on his way to the Oval Office.

In early January, the meeting was postponed until February. At that time, there was no mention of the change in administration being an issue, Trump, or his anticipated executive orders on offshore wind farms.

On January 22nd, Nantucket E-News simply posted: “The Nantucket Select Board Public Info Session - Vineyard Wind Turbine Failure - February 3, 2005 webinar has been canceled.”

The irony here is that despite the Select Board’s plea on behalf of the BSEE on Christmas Eve for “written questions” from the Nantucket community, not one of the over 500 questions submitted has been answered.

Today’s cancellation leads me to my second written question: Were the Select Board and BSEE truly serious about co-hosting a public webinar to begin with?

Two meetings.

Two no-shows.

Too bad.

The co-hosted webinar was about more than just offshore wind development or turbine blades or Vineyard Wind or GE Vernova.

From the community’s perspective, it was about credibility and the opportunity to be heard.

The mere fact that the Select Board and BSEE received over 500 written questions in a limited window during the Christmas holiday only underscores the fact the community is not going to let this go away. And yet, concerned citizens were left in the dark again.

With island-wide expectations low, the decision to cancel the co-hosted forum only highlights a growing wave of distrust that has eroded the confidence voters have in their elected officials. Moreover, it continues a troubling trend where checking the politically correct box is more important than answering the politically incorrect questions.

For example, when State Senator Julian Cyr attended a Select Board meeting to address the Nantucket community on the GNA and blade failure, he simply read a short statement; and then, escaped out the back door.

No questions from the public were allowed and not one question from the Select Board.

How can that be?

When the Select Board hosted a special meeting with Cultural Heritage Partners on November 19 to address Southcoast Wind mitigation, chairperson Mohr outlined strict meeting guidelines for those community members who attended that specifically prevented any back-and-forth dialogue on key subject matter. In doing so, the public was led to believe that the forum’s discussion and subsequent mitigation suggestions would have a legitimate impact on BOEM.’s review.

How did BOEM respond?

Not well.

BOEM ignored suggestions from Nantucket; and within days, Vineyard Wind resumed blade installations on 12/14. Following that - and not to be outdone - the Biden administration lifted Vineyard Wind’s suspension order on January 18th.

Here we are today, potentially on the brink of yet another golden opportunity for the Nantucket community to take the gloves off and get to the crux of the matter; and yet, the Nantucket community is the only one who got dressed for the ball.

Is this how democracy works?

No.

When Nantucket’s own, Rob Ranney, representing the Steamship Authority’s Board of Governors, addressed the Advisory Committee of the Non-Voting Taxpayers a few weeks ago, do you think he was given the questions in advance with a month to prepare, and then was able to cancel at the last minute when he did not like what he saw?

According to Ranney, “I continued until all the questions were answered.”

Over the last few months, we have heard from a handful of officials who have briefly addressed Nantucket residents under the auspices of providing the community with information. With strict guidelines in place muzzling the audience, Select Board members have argued that the mere fact these representatives have graced our island and spoken to the community is a step in the right direction and that a non-adversarial negotiating stance would keep the lines of communications open and bring the opposition to the table.

How’s that working out?

We are no closer to getting to the bottom of this mess than we were in July. And yet, among others, we have heard from Klaus Moeller, the CEO of Vineyard Wind, BOEM reps, Roger Martella, GE’s chief sustainability officer, Greg Werkheiser and Will Cook from Cultural Heritage Partners, State Senator Julian Cyr, Jen Collen, Vineyard Wind’s director of workforce, and maybe someday, from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

If our Select Board continues to endorse meetings with preconditions that stifle communications between the community and the representatives they are hosting, then the gesture is meaningless.

Today, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement controls the narrative. Frankly, even Louis Braille would have seen right through the BSEE’s obvious attempt to manipulate the situation and it only confirms what George Bernard Shaw once said:

“The single biggest problem with communications is the illusion of transparency…”

To cut to the chase, simply ask yourself:

Are we better informed, better represented, and in a better position today than we were seven months ago?

There has to be a better method to this madness.

I am not sure if it is Cultural Heritage Partners, chairperson Mohr, Vineyard Wind, or Governor Healey who is pulling the strings but someone has to be calling the shots and driving the bus.

And yet, to have five educated, duly elected Select Board members with contrasting styles, male and female, young and older, and from opposite philosophical foundations, all silently falling into universal lock-step formation without a word of dissent to this restrictive approach over and over again just doesn’t add up.

Nantucket has lost millions of dollars. We have lost leverage, valuable time, and the shine off our designation as a National Historic Landmark.

What else can we lose?

Credibility.

And after today, I doubt we’ll have much left.