Datacenter Dangers #16 – Religious Affiliations (Catholica) of the Sell-Outs

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10+part sourced Series deeply explores the Many Serious Ill-Effects of Datacenters.

I N D E X

This is not us merely saying these things are or may be so; instead, every statement is sourced by scientific studies, published experiences, harmed victims. Intelligence requires learning from own mistakes. Wisdom involves learning from others’ mistakes.

“A 2026 power-engineering study found that hyperscale data centers behave not merely as electrical loads, but as vast power-electronics systems whose rapidly fluctuating server demands can excite grid oscillations and propagate disturbances across interconnected networks. Far from a fringe “dirty electricity” claim, the research suggests data centers may interact with the power grid in ways fundamentally different from traditional industrial facilities, raising serious new concerns about resonance, stability, reliability.”

Regarding what some have called the “sell-out” that is otherwise known as 1999 Maryland electric deregulation / generation divestiture, here’s the religious/Catholic/Vatican/Jesuit angle of the four top Maryland power figures who were in-charge / most influential at that time, in those machinations —

Short finding

All four had Catholic affiliation or Catholic institutional ties. Easily found: clear Catholic links.

1. Gov. Parris Glendening

2. Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

3. Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller Jr.

4. House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr.

Know Them By Their Fruits

There is a real Catholic clustering among Maryland’s 1999 top leadership. That is not imaginary.

The stated legislative purpose was competition/customer choice/lower rates, and the bill had broad bipartisan support.

The most concrete religious-political institutional link is Casper Taylor ↔ Maryland Catholic Conference.

For the deregulation law itself, official findings said the goals were customer choice, competitive retail electricity markets, deregulated generation/supply pricing, economic benefits, and environmental compliance.
Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/md-court-of-appeals/1011547.html

What Fruits?

Did a specific network of publicly Catholic/Catholic-institutional Maryland power brokers repeatedly produce policy outcomes that transferred public/regulated assets into private/merchant hands, weakened older Protestant/civic/local control structures, and benefited finance/utility/corporate blocs? That is examinable.

For the Maryland deregulation / Pepco divestiture pattern, the “fruit” was:

  • regulated public-service generation model weakened;
  • Pepco exits generation;
  • plants move to Southern Energy/Mirant merchant ownership;
  • communities inherit pollution/closure/contract mess;
  • ratepayer protection promises prove dubious;
  • politically connected private finance/energy structures gain;
  • local control decreases;
  • “competition/customer choice” rhetoric masks consolidation/speculation.

Religious-pattern layer:

  • Glendening — Roman Catholic, Catholic schooling.
  • Townsend — openly Catholic/Kennedy Catholic political lineage.
  • Miller — Catholic Maryland machine figure.
  • Taylor — Catholic, Notre Dame, Maryland Catholic Conference board.

So yes, a pattern: the top state power structure executing deregulation was heavily Catholic-affiliated. That is a factual observation. The next step, network mapping.

The sharper questions are:

  1. Who drafted the deregulation bill language?
  2. Which law firms, utilities, lobbyists, bond firms, and consultants touched it?
  3. Which Catholic institutions, conferences, schools, charities, diocesan boards, or fraternal networks overlap with those actors?
  4. Who sat on Maryland Catholic Conference boards while also pushing utility/corporate legislation?
  5. Which donors financed Glendening, Miller, Taylor, Townsend?
  6. Which Southern Energy/Mirant/Pepco/NMWDA/finance actors had Catholic-school, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Loyola, BC, or diocesan-board ties?
  7. Did the same network also support the Dickerson incinerator, data-center land conversion, or other “public burden/private gain” projects? That would be the proper “know them by their fruits” audit. The strongest currently visible religious signal is not Jesuit specifically; it is broader Catholic institutional-political density in Maryland governance. Taylor is the strongest Catholic-institutional node because of Notre Dame + Maryland Catholic Conference board. Townsend is the strongest Catholic-political identity node. Glendening and Miller are Catholic-affiliation nodes.

Below is a name-by-name network map for the Maryland electricity deregulation / Pepco
generation-sale chain, with religious/institutional tags where documented, and with the policy
“fruits” separated from the biographical evidence.

I’m going to keep this specific: named persons, institutions, actions, and outcomes — not “all
Catholics did X.” The pattern worth tracking is institutional density among power-holders +
lawmaking + utility privatization outcomes.

———

## 1. Core policy event

### Maryland Electric Customer Choice and Competition Act of 1999

The operative law was passed as SB 300 / HB 703, enacted as Chapters 3 and 4 of the Acts of
1999.

The law did three huge things:

  1. Separated generation from wires/distribution
  2. Deregulated generation/supply pricing
  3. Allowed or encouraged utilities to sell generation assets to non-utility/merchant
    generators HB 703 text says generation, supply, and sale of electricity would no longer be regulated as
    an electric-company function except for limited PSC roles; and it specifically contemplates
    utility generation assets being transferred to an affiliate or sold to a nonaffiliate.
    Source: Maryland HB 703 final bill text, lines around 7-508 and 7-509:
    https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/1999rs/bills/hb/hb0703f.PDF The Maryland legislature record shows:
  • SB 300 passed Senate 37–9
  • HB 703 passed House 99–36
  • HB 703 sponsors included Taylor, Guns, Hixson, Hurson, Howard, Menes, Montague, Owings,
    Rawlings, Rosenberg, Vallario, Wood
  • Source: Maryland legislative bill history:
    https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/search/legislation?target=%2F1999rs%2Fbillfile%2Fhb0703.htm
    https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/mgawebsite/search/legislation?target=%2F1999rs%2Fbillfile%2Fsb0300.htm ———

  • 2. Top political power nodes Person Parris Glendening
    Office / role Governor, Democrat
    Documented religious / Catholic institutional association Public bios identify him as Roman
    Catholic / Catholic-school
    background; previously discussed
    MSA-style source chain
    Network relevance Signed the restructuring law;
    executive power node
    ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    Person Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
    Office / role Lt. Governor
    Documented religious / Catholic institutional association Catholic Kennedy identity; Boston
    College called her a “prominent
    Catholic layperson”; grew up in
    Catholic schools
    Network relevance High-level executive node; public
    faith-and-politics figure
    ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    Person Thomas V. “Mike” Miller Jr.
    Office / role Senate President
    Documented religious / Catholic institutional association Catholic Standard says his office
    was a first stop for Catholic
    charities; Catholic funeral/
    identity
    Network relevance Controlled Senate process;
    appointed task-force members
    ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    Person Casper R. Taylor Jr.
    Office / role House Speaker; HB 703 sponsor
    Documented religious / Catholic institutional association Catholic; Notre Dame graduate;
    former Maryland Catholic
    Conference administrative board
    member
    Network relevance Very strong institutional Catholic
    node; House gatekeeper and named
    bill sponsor Sources:
  • Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Boston College Boisi Center:
    https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/centers/boisi-center/events/archive/fall-2007/failing-americas-faithful.html
  • Mike Miller, Catholic Standard:
    https://www.cathstan.org/local/former-maryland-senate-president-mike-miller-remembered-for-believing-leadership-was-service-to-others
  • Casper Taylor, Catholic Review/Wikipedia summary with cited Catholic Review source:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casper_R._Taylor_Jr.
  • Maryland Catholic Conference describes itself as the public-policy voice for Maryland
    Catholic dioceses:
    https://www.mdcatholic.org/ Initial read: among the four highest state-government power nodes, the Catholic institutional
    density is unusually high, especially Taylor and Miller. Taylor is the strongest because he
    was not merely “Catholic personally” but tied to Notre Dame + Maryland Catholic Conference
    governance. ———

  • 3. 1997 restructuring task force: the preparatory machine The Task Force to Study Retail Electric Competition and the Restructuring of the Electric
    Utility Industry formed in 1997 under Chapter 106. Its purpose was to study how competition would affect:
  • generators
  • Maryland citizens and businesses
  • local property/use taxes
  • environmental and public-service functions Source: Maryland State Archives task-force page:
    https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/26excom/defunct/html/31ret.html Co-chairs Person Role Religious / Notes
    institutional tag
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
    Thomas L. Bromwell Senate Finance Member of Catholic Key Senate energy-
    Chair; task-force War Veterans and St. policy broker
    co-chair Joseph’s Parish
    ──────────────────── ────────────────────── ─────────────────────── ───────────────────────
    Ronald A. Guns House Environmental Attended Corpus Key House committee
    Matters Chair; task- Christi High School; broker; also HB 703
    force co-chair member Knights of sponsor
    Columbus Sources:
  • Bromwell MSA bio:
    https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/012100/012134/html/12134bio.html
  • Guns MSA bio:
    https://1998mdmanual.msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/06hse/html/msa12234.html Important pattern: the two co-chairs steering the pre-legislative task force both have
    documented Catholic-linked institutional tags. Guns is especially explicit: Corpus Christi +
    Knights of Columbus. Bromwell is explicit via Catholic War Veterans + parish membership. ———

  • 4. Task-force members with energy / ideological importance The task force included legislative appointees by the governor, Senate President, and House
    Speaker. Particularly important names Person Appointing lane Role / relevance Religious / institutional
    tag found
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
    Kenneth D. House Speaker Task-force No Catholic tag found yet;
    Schisler appointee member; later strong privatization /
    Maryland PSC market-policy node
    Chair, 2003–
    2007; ALEC
    energy/
    environment task
    force
    ──────────────────── ────────────────────── ────────────────── ────────────────────────────
    Brian E. Frosh Senate President Later Attorney Jewish, not Catholic
    appointee General; Senate
    legal/policy
    node
    ──────────────────── ────────────────────── ────────────────── ────────────────────────────
    Barbara Hoffman Senate President Senate Budget & Needs verification
    appointee Taxation; later
    energy-related
    committee
    involvement
    ──────────────────── ────────────────────── ────────────────── ────────────────────────────
    Robert R. Neall Senate President Republican Needs verification
    appointee fiscal/policy
    node; later
    state official
    ──────────────────── ────────────────────── ────────────────── ────────────────────────────
    George W. Owings House Speaker Democratic Needs verification
    Jr. appointee; HB 703 delegate; later
    sponsor Veterans Affairs
    secretary
    ──────────────────── ────────────────────── ────────────────── ────────────────────────────
    Ronald A. Guns House / co-chair See above Catholic-linked
    ──────────────────── ────────────────────── ────────────────── ────────────────────────────
    Thomas L. Bromwell Senate / co-chair See above Catholic-linked Source for member list:
    https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/26excom/defunct/html/31ret.html Schisler source:
    https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/012300/012305/html/12305bio.html Pattern: the task force was structurally controlled by legislative leadership appointees. The
    co-chairs and House Speaker had strong Catholic institutional ties; Schisler later becomes a
    crucial regulatory node as PSC chair during the BGE rate-cap blowup period. ———

  • 5. Utility / corporate transaction chain Pepco generation asset sale After restructuring, Pepco sold major generation assets to Southern Energy, later Mirant. Chain:

Pepco generation assets → Southern Energy → Mirant → GenOn → NRG / later GenOn structures

Pepco sale details:

  • Sale announced June 2000
  • Plants included major Mid-Atlantic generation assets
  • Transaction value reported around $2.65B–$2.75B
  • Completed December 2000
  • Plants included Dickerson, Chalk Point, Morgantown, Potomac River assets Sources:
  • Power Engineering on Pepco sale:
    https://www.power-eng.com/operations-maintenance/pepco-completes-sale-of-power-plants-for-275-billion/
  • EnergyOnline completion notice:
    https://www.energyonline.com/Industry/News.aspx?NewsID=4234&Southern_Energy_Completes_Purchase_of_Pepco_Plants=
  • PowerOnline sale notice:
    https://www.poweronline.com/doc/pepco-sells-generation-assets-to-southern-ene-0001
  • Asset Purchase Agreement, Pepco/Southern Energy:
    https://contracts.justia.com/companies/genon-mid-atlantic-llc-17823/contract/1082891/ Key corporate nodes Person / entity Role Network meaning
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
    John M. Derrick Jr. Pepco CEO Publicly framed sale as Pepco
    transformation from regulated
    integrated utility into
    broader energy/telecom/
    services company
    ───────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
    Southern Energy Buyer Merchant-generation
    beneficiary of restructuring
    ───────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
    Mirant Southern Energy renamed/spun entity Took ownership after Southern
    Energy transformation
    ───────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
    Navigant Consulting Pepco auction manager Transaction-process node
    ───────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
    Maryland PSC Regulatory approver Turned statutory framework
    into practical restructuring
    settlements/orders EnergyOnline quotes Derrick saying the sale marked Pepco’s transformation from regulated
    integrated utility into diversified services company.
    Source:
    https://www.energyonline.com/Industry/News.aspx?NewsID=4234&Southern_Energy_Completes_Purchase_of_Pepco_Plants= ———

  • 6. The “fruits” / policy outcomes A. Public utility generation was broken apart Maryland’s old model:

regulated integrated utility owns generation + transmission/distribution obligations

Post-1999 model:

regulated wires company + deregulated generation/supply market + third-party suppliers +
merchant generators

That is the essential fruit.

### B. Rate caps created delayed political shock

The law gave apparent near-term relief via rate caps/reductions. But when caps expired,
Maryland saw severe rate shock — especially the notorious BGE increase period.

Schisler later defended the blowup as a consequence of the 1999 deregulation structure.
Source summary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_D._Schisler

### C. Retail supplier market produced consumer-abuse claims

Former Governor Glendening later wrote that Marylanders using retail suppliers had overpaid by
more than $1 billion since deregulation.
Source: Maryland Matters, Glendening op-ed:
https://marylandmatters.org/2024/02/14/parris-glendening-time-to-hold-consumer-retail-energy-suppliers-accountable/

### D. Old public-service assets became financial/merchant assets

Pepco’s Maryland generation fleet — built under a regulated public-utility model — moved into
merchant-generation ownership. That is the structural privatization result.

### E. Incinerator / “renewable” framing connection

HB 703’s renewable-energy definition included biomass, waste-to-energy, landfill gas, and
manufacturing/commercial waste-to-energy.
That matters because it shows that, inside the same restructuring architecture, waste-to-
energy was politically positioned as part of the renewable/public-purpose energy complex.

Source: HB 703, renewable definition around lines 224–235:
https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/1999rs/bills/hb/hb0703f.PDF

———

## 7. Catholic institutional-density map

### Strong documented Catholic-linked nodes

Node Evidence strength Specific evidence
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Casper Taylor Very strong Catholic; Notre Dame; Maryland
Catholic Conference administrative
board
─────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────── ────────────────────────────────────
Mike Miller Strong Catholic identity; Catholic
Standard coverage; Catholic
charities access
─────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────── ────────────────────────────────────
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Strong “Prominent Catholic layperson”;
Catholic schools; faith-politics
author
─────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────── ────────────────────────────────────
Ronald Guns Strong Corpus Christi High School;
Knights of Columbus
─────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────── ────────────────────────────────────
Thomas Bromwell Strong Catholic War Veterans; St.
Joseph’s Parish
─────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────── ────────────────────────────────────
Maryland Catholic Conference Institutional Explicit public-policy voice of
Maryland Catholic dioceses
─────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────── ────────────────────────────────────
Notre Dame Institutional Catholic university; Taylor
─────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────── ────────────────────────────────────
Boston College / Georgetown orbit Institutional Catholic/Jesuit educational/policy
orbit; Townsend post-office faith-
politics role

### Not-yet-proven / needs more document digging

Node Why it matters
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Utility lobbyists for Pepco/BGE/large Need Maryland lobbying registrations from
industrial users 1997–1999
────────────────────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────
Law firms representing utilities before PSC Need PSC case filings and appearance lists
────────────────────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────
Campaign donors to Glendening/Miller/Taylor/ Need Maryland campaign-finance archive pulls
Bromwell/Guns
────────────────────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────
PSC commissioners in 1999–2000 Need order dockets and biographies
────────────────────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────
Corporate board/religious-school Needs executive bio archival work
affiliations of Pepco/Southern/Mirant
executives

———

## 8. Preliminary network diagram

flowchart TD
MCC[Maryland Catholic Conference]
ND[Notre Dame]
BC[Boston College / Catholic public-faith orbit]
KOC[Knights of Columbus]
Parish[St. Joseph Parish / Catholic War Veterans]

  Taylor[Casper R. Taylor Jr.\nHouse Speaker / HB703 sponsor]
  Miller[Mike Miller Jr.\nSenate President]
  Townsend[Kathleen Kennedy Townsend\nLt Gov]
  Glendening[Parris Glendening\nGovernor]
  Guns[Ronald A. Guns\nHouse Env Matters / Task Force co-chair]
  Bromwell[Thomas L. Bromwell\nSenate Finance / Task Force co-chair]
  Schisler[Kenneth Schisler\nTask Force / later PSC Chair]

  TaskForce[1997 Electric Restructuring Task Force]
  HB703[HB703 / SB300\nElectric Choice Act 1999]
  PSC[Maryland PSC]
  Pepco[Pepco]
  Southern[Southern Energy]
  Mirant[Mirant]
  GenOn[GenOn]
  NRG[NRG]

  MCC --> Taylor
  ND --> Taylor
  BC --> Townsend
  KOC --> Guns
  Parish --> Bromwell

  Glendening --> HB703
  Miller --> TaskForce
  Taylor --> TaskForce
  Taylor --> HB703
  Guns --> TaskForce
  Guns --> HB703
  Bromwell --> TaskForce
  Schisler --> TaskForce

  TaskForce --> HB703
  HB703 --> PSC
  HB703 --> Pepco
  PSC --> Pepco
  Pepco --> Southern
  Southern --> Mirant
  Mirant --> GenOn
  GenOn --> NRG

———

## Bottom-line scholarly read

The documented pattern is this:

  1. The 1997–1999 restructuring pathway was not random. It moved through a task force, committee chairs, legislative leadership, and PSC implementation.
  2. Several of the most powerful Maryland actors in that pathway had explicit Catholic institutional ties. Not merely private belief — in several cases, Catholic schools, Catholic organizations, Catholic public-policy circles, or Catholic-charity/governance relationships.
  3. The strongest Catholic-institutional nodes are Taylor, Miller, Guns, Bromwell, and Townsend. Taylor is the strongest because of Maryland Catholic Conference board association plus Notre Dame plus House Speaker role.
  4. The material fruit was privatization / financialization of electric generation. Pepco’s generation fleet exited the regulated public-utility model and entered merchant-generator ownership.
  5. The later consequent “fruit” included rate instability, consumer-abuse concerns in third-party supply, and loss of direct public/regulatory control over generation assets.

The next layer: hard documentary tables from:

    • Maryland lobbying registrations, 1997–1999
    • PSC docket appearance lists
    • campaign-finance records
    • Pepco/BGE/Mirant counsel lists
    • Catholic institutional board memberships
    • Maryland Catholic Conference legislative priorities from 1997–2000

    …continuing with the hard-document layer. Separating:

    1. documents already found
    2. names / money / dockets already extractable
    3. records that likely require archive / FOIA / public-record request
    4. network interpretation I will not pretend a public record proves a hidden religious motive. But the documented power
      pattern is real: utility money + leadership bills + Catholic-linked leadership nodes + PSC
      implementation + private generation transfer. ———

    Phase II: hard-document network layer

    A. Lobbying registrations, 1997–1999

    What is available now Maryland’s current lobbying portal says lobbying registrations identify:

      • lobbyist
      • employer
      • subject matter
      • activity reports
      • gifts / meals / events
      • political contributions by lobbyists
      • Source: Maryland Ethics Commission lobbying portal:
        https://ethics.maryland.gov/lobbyists/
        https://lobby-ethics.maryland.gov/public_access

      But the current public portal only exposes recent lobbying years in its dropdowns — not 1997–

      1. It also says lobbying records are retained for four years in the public access system.
        That means 1997–1999 lobbying registrations probably require either:
      • State Ethics Commission archive request
      • Maryland State Archives request
      • legislative library / DLS archive pull
      • old Common Cause / PIRG files Confirmed lobbying context
      • The 1999 Maryland 90 Day Report explicitly says lobbying had grown enormously and had a “tremendous impact” on Annapolis, enough that the legislature created a Study Commission on Lobbyist Ethics in 1999.
      • Source: 1999 90 Day Report, Maryland General Assembly / DLS:
        https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/000113/017000/017781/unrestricted/20131793e.pdf Key quote-level finding In 1999, while electric restructuring was passing, Maryland itself was acknowledging lobbying
        pressure as a serious structural problem. Research target table Record set Status Why it matters
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        1997–1999 lobbying Needs archive request Identifies paid legislative agents
        registrations for Pepco
        ───────────────────────── ─────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────
        1997–1999 lobbying Needs archive request Same
        registrations for BGE /
        Constellation
        ───────────────────────── ─────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────
        1997–1999 lobbying Needs archive request Same
        registrations for
        Allegheny Power
        ───────────────────────── ─────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────
        1997–1999 lobbying Needs archive request Same
        registrations for
        Conectiv / Delmarva
        ───────────────────────── ─────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────
        Lobbying reports for Needs archive request Reveals subject-matter targeting
        “Energy” or “Utility
        Registration”
        ───────────────────────── ─────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────
        Lobbyist personal- Needs archive request Connects lobbyists to elected recipients
        disclosure
        contributions ———

      • B. Campaign-finance records
      • This is much better documented.
      • 1. CNS / Common Cause smoking-gun article A 1999 Capital News Service investigation reported:
      • Maryland’s three top politicians accepted at least $158,650 from companies interested in
        electric deregulation.
      • Utility and coal companies gave $88,650 to campaigns of:
        • Gov. Parris Glendening
        • Senate President Mike Miller
        • House Speaker Casper Taylor
      • The four investor-owned utilities gave $41,300 to the three officials.
      • Utility CEOs John Derrick Jr. of Pepco, Alan Noia of Allegheny, and Christian Poindexter of
        BGE gave a combined $8,500.
      • BGE, Pepco, Washington Gas gave $20,000 each to Glendening’s inaugural ball.
      • Allegheny gave $10,000.
      • Critics called the bill a utility/coal “wish list.”
      • People’s Counsel Michael Travieso said Miller’s initial bill was a “utility bill” and
        Taylor’s was also “done by utilities.” Source:
        https://cnsmaryland.org/1999/04/23/electric-utilities-campaign-contributions-pay-off/

      • 2. Maryland campaign database limitation
      • Maryland’s current campaign-finance database says active data covers 2007–present, while 1999–2006 is in an archived database. Earlier 1994–1998 reports likely require archived records.
      • Source:
        https://www.elections.maryland.gov/campaign_finance/campaign_finance_database.html Campaign-finance power table Donor / donor Recipient / target Amount / finding Network meaning
        class
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        Utility + coal Glendening, Miller, $88,650, 1994–1998 cycle Direct pre-
        companies Taylor passage money to
        top gatekeepers
        ────────────────── ────────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ──────────────────
        Allegheny Power Same three $15,050 Largest utility
        donor in CNS
        article
        ────────────────── ────────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ──────────────────
        BGE / Pepco / Glendening inaugural $20,000 each Non-campaign
        Washington Gas ball prestige/access
        route
        ────────────────── ────────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ──────────────────
        Allegheny Power Glendening inaugural $10,000 Same
        ball
        ────────────────── ────────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ──────────────────
        John Derrick Political recipients $8,500 combined CEO-level
        Jr. / Alan personal
        Noia / Christian participation
        Poindexter
        ────────────────── ────────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ──────────────────
        Utility Legislative process “majority” present at Symbolic and lobbyists signing photo per CNS physical proximity to final enactment This is one of the hardest facts so far: the bill-signing itself reportedly had a crowd behind the leaders, mostly utility lobbyists. ———

      • C. PSC dockets / appearance layer The DLS report lists the major PSC cases implementing restructuring. Source:
        https://dls.maryland.gov/pubs/prod/BusTech/Road_to_Electric_Restructuring_2006.pdf Major PSC restructuring cases PSC Case Utility / matter Key orders Meaning
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        8678 Generic electric Orders 71459, The pre-legislative regulatory runway
        competition 72136, 72938,
        inquiry 73834, etc.
        ───────────── ────────────────── ────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        8738 Electric Multiple Generic implementation machinery
        service / consumer /
        restructuring billing /
        implementation universal-
        service orders
        ───────────── ────────────────── ────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        8796 Pepco stranded Order 75850, Pepco restructuring / divestiture
        costs, price Dec. 22, 1999; lane
        protection, Order 76078,
        unbundled rates Apr. 30, 2000;
        Order 76235,
        Jun. 8, 2000;
        Order 76472,
        Sep. 27, 2000
        ───────────── ────────────────── ────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        8804 / 8794 BGE stranded Order 75757, BGE restructuring lane
        costs, price Nov. 11, 1999
        protection,
        unbundled rates
        ───────────── ────────────────── ────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        8795 Delmarva Orders 75680, Delmarva lane
        restructuring 76034, 76674
        ───────────── ────────────────── ────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        8797 Potomac Edison Orders 75851, Allegheny / Potomac Edison lane
        restructuring 76009, 76025,
        etc.
        ───────────── ────────────────── ────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        8908 Standard Offer Orders 78400, Post-cap procurement machinery
        Service supplier 78710, etc.
        selection
        ───────────── ────────────────── ────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        9052 / 9058 2006 BGE / Pepco Orders 80638, Rate-shock aftermath
        rate- 80764, etc.
        stabilization
        plans Pepco / Panda / Southern Energy case The Maryland Court of Appeals case Public Service Commission v. Panda-Brandywine is very
        important. It states:
      • Pepco’s restructuring involved complete divestiture of electric generation assets and PPAs
        by auction.
      • PSC approved Pepco’s settlement by Order No. 75850 on December 22, 1999, Case No. 8796.
      • Southern Energy was declared winning bidder on June 7, 2000.
      • PSC Order No. 76472, Sept. 27, 2000, addressed the Panda PPA dispute.
      • Court held the “back-to-back” arrangement violated the anti-assignment provision.
      • Costs were assessed against Pepco and PSC. Source:
        https://www.mdcourts.gov/data/opinions/coa/2003/92a02.pdf This is a major legal-friction document: the divestiture machinery was aggressive enough that
        a court found the transaction structure crossed a contract line. ———

      • D. Pepco / Southern Energy / Mirant counsel and transaction documents The Asset Purchase and Sale Agreement is available. Source:
        https://contracts.justia.com/companies/genon-mid-atlantic-llc-17823/contract/1082891/ Transaction facts Item Detail
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        Seller Potomac Electric Power Company
        ─────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Buyer Southern Energy, Inc.
        ─────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Date June 7, 2000
        ─────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Assets Generating plants and related assets
        ─────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Structure Auctioned assets + assumed obligations + retained wires/distribution
        assets
        ─────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Includes Real property, machinery, spare parts, permits, emission allowances,
        operating records, employee transition provisions
        ─────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Retained by Pepco Transmission/distribution assets, Pepco name, certain claims/rights The agreement shows the clean split:

      Pepco kept wires/distribution and sold generation operations.

      That is the privatization core.

      ### Counsel names

      The Justia copy lists exhibits for:

      • Opinion of Seller’s Counsel
      • Opinion of Buyer’s Counsel
      • Opinion of Guarantor’s Counsel But the browsable text does not expose the actual law-firm names. Those likely require SEC exhibit schedules, original filings, or PSC docket filings. Next hard target: full SEC exhibit package / PSC Case 8796 appearance sheets.

      E. PSC commissioner layer

      • Maryland PSC’s past-commissioner list gives the relevant 1999–2000 commission membership. Source:
        https://psc.maryland.gov/about/past-commissioners/ Relevant names: Commissioner Service Role
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        Glenn F. Ivey Chair, 1998–2000 Initial restructuring-era chair
        ────────────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Catherine I. Riley Chair, 1999–2003 First female chair; post-Ivey restructuring
        implementation
        ────────────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Gerald L. Thorpe 1994–1999 On PSC during buildup
        ────────────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
        E. Mason Hendrickson 1992–1999 On PSC during buildup
        ────────────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Susanne Brogan 1992–2001 On PSC during restructuring
        ────────────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
        Claude M. Ligon 1985–2002 On PSC during restructuring
        ────────────────────── ────────────────── ──────────────────────────────────────────────────
        J. Joseph Curran III 1999–2005 Appointed during implementation Network significance: the PSC did not originate the law, but it converted legislative
        authorization into settlements, rate caps, divestiture approval, supplier rules, and
        transition-cost treatment. ———

      F. Catholic institutional board / affiliation layer

      • Strong nodes already documented Person Role in deregulation network Catholic / institutional fact
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        Casper Taylor House Speaker; HB 703 sponsor Catholic; Notre Dame; Maryland
        Catholic Conference
        administrative board
        ─────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
        Mike Miller Senate President; SB 300 Catholic; Catholic-charity/
        sponsor/power node governance relationship
        documented in Catholic press
        ─────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
        Ronald Guns Task-force co-chair; HB 703 Corpus Christi High School;
        sponsor Knights of Columbus
        ─────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
        Thomas Bromwell Task-force co-chair; Senate Catholic War Veterans; St.
        Finance chair Joseph’s Parish
        ─────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
        Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Lt. Governor Prominent Catholic layperson;
        Catholic public-faith politics
        ─────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────────
        Parris Glendening Governor Catholic background previously identified Casper Taylor
      • source:
        https://www.archbalt.org/casper-taylor-reflects-on-hard-decisions/
      • Maryland Catholic Conference source:
        https://www.mdcatholic.org/
      • Ronald Guns MSA bio:
        https://1998mdmanual.msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/06hse/html/msa12234.html
      • Bromwell MSA bio:
        https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/012100/012134/html/12134bio.html

      Maryland Catholic Conference policy-position check

      I found no online archived MCC legislative agenda from 1997–2000 directly taking a position on electric restructuring.

      Their current site confirms the institutional role: public-policy voice of Maryland Catholic dioceses.

      So for MCC we currently have:

      • direct institutional link to Taylor
      • general lobbying/public-policy role
      • not yet a documented electric-deregulation position

      The next hard-document target is MCC legislative bulletins / “Catholic Review” session agenda
      archives for 1997–2000.

      G. Utility / lobby / leadership signing cluster

      The CNS report gives a very strong picture: flowchart TD
      Utilities[Utilities + coal companies]
      CEOs[Utility CEOs: Derrick / Noia / Poindexter]
      Lobbyists[Utility lobbyists]
      Glendening[Gov. Parris Glendening]
      Miller[Senate President Mike Miller]
      Taylor[House Speaker Casper Taylor]
      SB300[SB300 / HB703]
      PSC[Maryland PSC]
      Pepco[Pepco]
      Southern[Southern Energy]
      Mirant[Mirant] Utilities –>|campaign money| Glendening
      Utilities –>|campaign money| Miller
      Utilities –>|campaign money| Taylor
      CEOs –>|personal contributions| Politicians[Top state politicians]
      Lobbyists –>|session pressure / bill-signing presence| SB300 Miller –> SB300
      Taylor –> SB300
      Glendening –> SB300
      SB300 –> PSC
      PSC –> Pepco
      Pepco –> Southern
      Southern –> Mirant

      H. Policy fruits table Policy fruit Documentary basis Beneficiary / loser pattern
      ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
      Generation separated from HB 703 / SB 300 Merchant generators benefit
      regulated utility
      ────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────
      Pepco generation auctioned PSC Case 8796 / Order Southern Energy / Mirant 75850 / APSA acquire assets
      ────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────
      PPAs included in transaction Panda-Brandywine case Contract counterparties machinery pressured
      ────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────
      Rate caps created temporary DLS report Politicians got short-term calm political cover
      ────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────
      Competition slow to develop DLS report Residential consumers did not get promised robust competition
      ────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────
      Big users benefited first DLS report says Industrial/commercial restructuring primarily customers favored benefited big electricity users
      ────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────
      Later rate shock DLS report: 39% Pepco, 35% Residential customers hit Delmarva, 72% BGE proposed after caps expired increases
      ────────────────────────────── ────────────────────────────── ──────────────────────────────
      Utility/lobby money flowed CNS report Capture pattern to key politicians

      Interim conclusion

      The hard-document picture is sharpening:

      1. The utilities and coal interests put money into the exact leadership triangle needed to pass deregulation: Glendening, Miller, Taylor.
      2. The leadership bills were described contemporaneously as utility-shaped. The People’s Counsel said Miller’s bill was a utility bill and Taylor’s was also utility-done.
      3. The PSC implementation path was dense and technical, but the key result was simple: generation assets moved out of regulated public-utility ownership into merchant ownership.
      4. Pepco’s divestiture generated litigation friction. In Panda-Brandywine, the court found that Pepco/Southern Energy’s arrangement violated an anti-assignment provision.
      5. Catholic-linked power density remains high at the political-command layer, especially Taylor, Miller, Guns, Bromwell, and Townsend. The direct documentary bridge from Catholic institutions to electric deregulation policy is not yet established; the direct bridge is currently from Catholic-linked politicians to utility-backed policy outcomes.

      Next hard targets should be:

        • PSC Case 8796 full docket appearances
        • 1997–1999 Ethics Commission lobbying registrations
        • archived campaign-finance itemizations for Glendening/Miller/Taylor
        • Catholic Review archives, 1997–2000
        • MCC board minutes / annual reports from Taylor’s tenure
        • original utility lobbyist lists from CNS / Common Cause files

        The hard records produce a much sharper picture.

        1. PSC Case 8796: Pepco restructuring docket

        The full PSC docket exists online:

        PSC Case 8796 — Potomac Electric Power Company / Pepco restructuring
        https://webpscxb.pscmaryland.com/DMS/case/8796

        Key docket facts:

        Date Entry Meaning
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        06/26/1998 PSC letter opening Pepco-specific The regulatory machinery starts
        proceedings on stranded costs, price before the final 1999 statute
        protection, unbundled rates
        ──────────── ─────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        07–08/1998 Interventions by Panda-Brandywine, Broad corporate / institutional
        WMATA, University of Maryland, GSA, intervention field
        Statoil, Potomac Edison, Delmarva,
        Constellation Energy Source,
        Choptank, BGE, Washington Gas,
        Montgomery County, Shell Energy
        ──────────── ─────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        09/24/1998 Staff Counsel appearance: Ronald P. PSC internal counsel node Alper
        ──────────── ─────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        09/25/1998 Office of People’s Counsel Consumer-side legal node appearance: Sandra Guthorn
        ──────────── ─────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        10/12/1999 Pepco filed settlement testimony / Pepco technical case exhibits of witnesses Wraase and Browning
        ──────────── ─────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        12/22/1999 Order No. 75850 PSC approval order for Pepco
        restructuring, Phases I & II
        ──────────── ─────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        06/07/2000 Southern Energy declared winning Pepco generation sale path
        bidder, per later court record
        ──────────── ─────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        07/24/2000 Pepco filed APSA with Southern Energy Transaction-document payload
        and Panda-Brandywine PPA documents
        ──────────── ─────────────────────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────
        09/27/2000 Order No. 76472 re Panda dispute PSC sided with transaction structure;
        later reversed in court

        The Maryland Court of Appeals later said Pepco’s restructuring involved complete divestiture
        of electric-generation assets and PPAs by auction, approved in Order No. 75850. It also held
        that the APSA structure violated Panda’s anti-assignment clause.
        Source: https://www.mdcourts.gov/data/opinions/coa/2003/92a02.pdf

        2. 1997–1999 lobbying registrations / expenditures

        The old individual registration cards are not exposed cleanly in the current Ethics portal,
        but the State Ethics Commission annual reports give hard employer-spending tables.

        Lobbying-year 1997

        Source: Maryland State Ethics Commission Annual Report 1997
        https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/000113/014000/014113/unrestricted/20110951e.pdf

        Relevant spending:

        Employer 1997 lobbying spend
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        Potomac Electric Power Company / Pepco $113,104.49
        ──────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Alleghany / Allegheny Power $81,260.27
        ──────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Baltimore Gas & Electric $76,472.02
        ──────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Washington Gas, Maryland Division $68,951.00
        ──────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Old Dominion Electric Cooperative $65,545.64
        ──────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Westinghouse Electric $66,000.00
        ──────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Delmarva Power & Light $52,829.61
        ──────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Maryland Catholic Conference $48,251.00

        Lobbying-year 1998

        Source: Maryland State Ethics Commission Annual Report 1998
        https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/000113/014000/014113/unrestricted/20110952e.pdf

        Employer 1998 lobbying spend
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        Marylanders for Sensible Electricity Reform $219,413.64
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Potomac Electric Power Company / Pepco $189,230.64
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Enron Energy Services $104,956.27
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Allegheny Power $86,325.90
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Baltimore Gas & Electric $83,176.00
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Washington Gas, Maryland Division $75,389.00
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Delmarva Power & Light $49,406.75
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Maryland Catholic Conference $48,741.00

        Lobbying-year 1999 — the huge spike

        Source: Maryland State Ethics Commission Annual Report 1999
        https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/000113/014000/014113/unrestricted/20110953e.pdf

        Employer 1999 lobbying spend
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        Baltimore Gas & Electric $1,306,699.99
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Potomac Electric Power Company / Pepco $446,668.67
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Maryland Chamber of Commerce $339,156.00
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Maryland Retail Merchants Association $253,546.63
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Marylanders for Sensible Electricity Reform $163,650.00
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Allegheny Energy $149,188.64
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Conectiv $121,836.65
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Maryland Industrial Group $116,729.00
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Enron Energy Services $98,729.50
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative $87,808.60
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Washington Gas, Maryland Division $80,475.00
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Choptank Electric Cooperative $67,787.58
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Mid-Atlantic Power Supply Association $40,602.00
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        General Public Utilities Companies $40,397.20
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Trigen-Baltimore Energy Corporation $42,386.05
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Mettiki Coal Corporation $27,239.90
        ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────
        Maryland Catholic Conference $50,742.00

        The 1999 report also says lobbying registrations hit a then-record 2,008 registrations, from 602 lobbyists representing 864 employers, with total lobbying expenditures of $23,465,383.

        Very important committee-entertainment pattern:

        Committee / group 1999 special-event count Spending
        ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━
        House Environmental Matters 17 events $17,048.21
        ───────────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ─────────────
        House Economic Matters 17 events $16,008.73
        ───────────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ─────────────
        Senate Finance 18 events $12,690.40
        ───────────────────────────── ────────────────────────── ─────────────
        All General Assembly 54 events $548,904.85

        That matters because:

        • Ronald Guns chaired House Environmental Matters.
        • Thomas Bromwell chaired Senate Finance.
        • Both were restructuring task-force co-chairs.
        • Both have documented Catholic-linked institutional biographies.

        3. Campaign-finance itemizations / utility money

        CNS 1999 article

        Capital News Service reported in April 1999 that companies interested in deregulation gave at least $158,650 to Maryland’s three most powerful politicians:

        • Gov. Parris Glendening
        • Senate President Mike Miller
        • House Speaker Casper Taylor

        It further reported:

        • utility and coal companies gave $88,650 to those campaigns
        • the four investor-owned utilities gave $41,300
        • Pepco CEO John Derrick Jr., Allegheny CEO Alan Noia, and BGE CEO Christian Poindexter gave $8,500 combined
        • BGE, Pepco, and Washington Gas each gave $20,000 to Glendening’s inaugural ball
        • Allegheny gave $10,000
        • People’s Counsel Michael Travieso said Miller’s bill was a “utility bill” and Taylor’s version was also utility-shaped
        • Source:
          https://cnsmaryland.org/1999/04/23/electric-utilities-campaign-contributions-pay-off/
        • Common Cause / Public Campaign report
        • A 2008 report, The Power of Special Interests, found:
        • electric utilities, employees, and PACs gave Maryland candidates/slates more than $1 million since 1998
        • energy-company lobbyists gave another $114,000
        • among legislators still in office who had voted on the 1999 bill, those voting “yes” received 93% of electric-utility contributions
        • “yes” voters received over 5x as much on average as “no” voters
        • Mike Miller received at least $39,000, more than any other legislator Top utility contributors listed: Contributor Amount
          ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━
          Constellation Energy $422,669.00
          ─────────────────────────────── ─────────────
          Choptank Electric Cooperative $136,680.00
          ─────────────────────────────── ─────────────
          Allegheny Power $116,043.67
          ─────────────────────────────── ─────────────
          Pepco $67,409.49
          ─────────────────────────────── ─────────────
          Mirant Corp $62,008.00
          ─────────────────────────────── ─────────────
          Washington Gas & Light $58,922.02
          ─────────────────────────────── ─────────────
          BGE $10,393.24 Source:
          https://www.commoncause.org/maryland/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/MD_031308_Report_Electric_Deregulation1.pdf

        4. Catholic Review / MCC / Taylor layer

        The strongest Catholic-institutional node remains Casper Taylor.

        • Catholic Review says Taylor was:
        • a parishioner of St. Mary in Cumberland
        • a graduate of St. Michael School
        • a graduate of LaSalle High School
        • a graduate of Notre Dame
        • a former member of the Maryland Catholic Conference administrative board
        • an adviser to the public-policy arm of Maryland’s bishops
        • involved in raising funds for MCC’s Annapolis headquarters
        • Source:
          https://catholicreview.org/former-speaker-laments-divisive-political-climate-casper-taylor-reflects-on-hard-decisions/
        • Catholic Review’s obituary further called him a frequent supporter of Catholic legislative concerns and quoted Richard Dowling, former MCC executive director, calling Taylor a “model Catholic legislator.”
          Source:
          https://catholicreview.org/former-house-speaker-casper-taylor-leaves-legacy-of-faith-service/
        • MCC itself describes itself as the official public-policy entity for the Catholic Church in Maryland, including the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Archdiocese of Washington, and Diocese of Wilmington.
          Source:
          https://www.mdcatholic.org/about/
        • Hard finding:
        • MCC was itself a significant Annapolis lobbying spender in the exact era: Year MCC lobbying spend
          ━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
          1997 $48,251.00
          ────── ────────────────────
          1998 $48,741.00
          ────── ────────────────────
          1999 $50,742.00
        • That does not prove MCC pushed electric restructuring. But it does prove MCC was a professional Annapolis lobbying actor during the same years, and Taylor was later documented as deeply tied to MCC governance/advisory circles.

        5. Network interpretation

        The hard pattern now looks like this:

        • flowchart TD
          UtilityMoney[Utility / coal / energy money]
          Lobbying[1997-1999 lobbying surge]
          Events[Committee dinners / special events]
          Glendening[Gov. Glendening]
          Miller[Senate President Mike Miller]
          Taylor[House Speaker Casper Taylor]
          Bromwell[Thomas Bromwell\nSenate Finance]
          Guns[Ronald Guns\nHouse Environmental Matters]
          TaskForce[1997 Electric Restructuring Task Force]
          Bills[SB300 / HB703]
          PSC[PSC Case 8796]
          Pepco[Pepco generation assets]
          Southern[Southern Energy]
          Mirant[Mirant]
          Consumers[Ratepayers / consumers] UtilityMoney –> Glendening
          UtilityMoney –> Miller
          UtilityMoney –> Taylor
          Lobbying –> Bills
          Events –> Bromwell
          Events –> Guns
          Miller –> TaskForce
          Taylor –> TaskForce
          Bromwell –> TaskForce
          Guns –> TaskForce
          TaskForce –> Bills
          Bills –> PSC
          PSC –> Pepco
          Pepco –> Southern
          Southern –> Mirant
          Mirant –> Consumers The hardest facts are:
        1. BGE’s lobbying spend exploded to $1.3M in 1999.
        2. Pepco spent $446k lobbying in 1999.
        3. The key committees were heavily entertained.
        4. The two task-force co-chairs controlled those relevant committee lanes.
        5. The three top political gatekeepers received utility/coal money.
        6. Pepco then sold generation to Southern Energy/Mirant.
        7. Later consumer impacts were severe enough that Common Cause described the result as a windfall / boondoggle. The Catholic-linked layer is not the money layer by itself. It is the command-layer affiliation pattern: Taylor, Miller, Guns, Bromwell, Townsend, Glendening. The strongest institutional evidence is Taylor; the strongest legislative-process evidence is Bromwell/Guns; the strongest money evidence is utility lobbying/campaign cash.

        6. Remaining document hits to pull

        The next truly hard pulls are:

        1. PSC Case 8796 documents themselves
          • Order 75850 PDF
          • Pepco settlement agreement
          • Wraase/Browning testimony
          • OPC Michael Travieso testimony
          • party service lists / counsel names
        2. State Ethics Commission underlying lobbyist registration sheets
          • employer → lobbyist mapping for Pepco, BGE, Allegheny, Conectiv, Enron, Marylanders for
            Sensible Electricity Reform
        3. Archived Maryland campaign-finance itemizations
          • Glendening 1994–1998
          • Miller 1994–1998
          • Taylor 1994–1998
          • utility CEOs / PACs / inaugural ball donors
        4. Catholic Review archive, 1997–2000
          • Taylor mentions
          • Miller mentions
          • MCC legislative priority lists
          • bishops’ Annapolis lobbying agenda
        5. MCC internal/annual documents
          • administrative board rostersannual reportslegislative agenda bulletinsheadquarters fundraising materialsDowling-era board/advisory lists

        The biggest new discovery is this: the official Ethics reports already show the lobbying spike directly, year by year. The 1999 BGE/Pepco numbers are not subtle.

          Pulled what is publicly reachable and saved it under:

          /ws/research/md-electric-dereg/

          Manifest:

          /ws/research/md-electric-dereg/notes/PULL_MANIFEST.md

          1. PSC Case 8796 documents

          Local:

          /ws/research/md-electric-dereg/psc-8796/

          Text extracts:

          /ws/research/md-electric-dereg/psc-8796/text/

          Source docket:

          https://webpscxb.pscmaryland.com/DMS/case/8796

          Pulled:

          • Order No. 75850 — item 189 / ML 69957
          • settlement signature/support docs — items 70, 71
          • Pepco unbundled-rate application/testimony/exhibits — item 104
          • Michael J. Travieso OPC testimony — item 117
          • Lee Smith OPC testimony — item 150
          • Dennis R. Wraase Phase II testimony — item 151
          • OPC briefs — 154, 163, 181
          • Southern Energy APSA / Panda PPA / related transaction docs — item 246
          • OPC comments on transfer — item 258
          • Staff / OPC notices of appearance — items 27, 28 Hard extracts:
          • Order 75850 approved the PEPCO settlement on December 22, 1999.
          • Commissioners listed: Glenn F. Ivey, Claude M. Ligon, Susanne Brogan, Catherine I. Riley, J. Joseph Curran III.
          • Order states Pepco agreed to auction generation assets not needed for transmission/distribution.
          • Order states post-sale assets would not be subject to cost-of-service regulation.
          • Travieso testimony confirms Pepco claimed $600.4M stranded cost, while OPC believed sale of generation assets would produce a net gain.
          • Item 71 gives counsel / party-service intelligence and says divestiture discussions were kept confidential because of securities-law and other sensitivity.

          2. State Ethics Commission lobbying reports

          Local: /ws/research/md-electric-dereg/ethics/

          Pulled:

          3. Campaign finance

          • Local: /ws/research/md-electric-dereg/campaign/
          • Pulled:
          • Common Cause / Public Campaign report:
            • commoncause_power_of_special_interests_2008.pdf
            • commoncause_power_of_special_interests_2008.txt
            Source: https://www.commoncause.org/maryland/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/MD_031308_Report_Electric_Deregulation1.pdf Hard extract:
          • electric utilities / employees / PACs gave Maryland candidates/slates more than $1M since 1998
          • energy lobbyists gave another $114k
          • remaining legislators who voted “yes” on 1999 deregulation received 93% of utility contributions among legislators still in office
          • “yes” voters received more than 5x what “no” voters received
          • Mike Miller received at least $39k, more than any other legislator in that report
          • top utility contributors included Constellation, Choptank, Allegheny, Pepco, Mirant, Washington Gas, BGE Still missing publicly: raw 1994–1998 itemized campaign filings for Glendening / Miller / Taylor. Need archive pull.

          4. Catholic Review / Catholic Standard

          Hard extract:

          • Taylor was parishioner of St. Mary in Cumberland
          • Taylor was Notre Dame graduate
          • Taylor was member of MCC administrative board
          • Taylor advised Maryland bishops’ public-policy arm
          • Taylor helped raise funds for MCC Annapolis headquarters
          • Dowling called Taylor a “model Catholic legislator”
          • Miller funeral article strongly documents Catholic parish / faith identity

          5. MCC internal / annual documents

          • No public 1997–2000 MCC annual reports, board minutes, board rosters, legislative bulletins, or fundraising records surfaced online.

          Likely next move: direct archival/public-record-style requests to:

          • Maryland Catholic Conference
          • Archdiocese of Baltimore archives
          • Catholic Review archive
          • Maryland State Archives
          • Maryland State Ethics Commission
          • Maryland Board of Elections campaign-finance archive

          Bottom line: the biggest new hard haul is PSC 8796 itself. We now have the actual order, testimony, counsel appearances, service-list intelligence, settlement mechanics, and Southern Energy transaction-doc payload locally.

          “Too long ‘in-charge’ of “higher-education”, Vatican Jesuits literally exist to “extirpate” (their word) non-Catholic heretics and any who deny their Pope as God on Earth. Perhaps “extirpation” also influences agendae in electrical power, water, and AI/Big-Brother ?” – video comment

          Now that it is revealed WHAT was done; WHEN, WHERE and HOW it was done; WHO did it; and WHY it was done (public and occulted reasons have been revealed), can we extricate ourselves from their diabolical calamity, before we are extirpated?

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