Orange County Power Authority fires embattled CEO Brian Probolsky

The board of the Orange County Power Authority, the fledgling green energy co-op created to compete with for-profit utilities while promoting renewable infrastructure in the region, voted to terminate embattled CEO Brian Probolsky in a closed session Wednesday.

Irvine City Council members Kathleen Treseder and Tammy Kim, as well as Buena Park City Councilman Jose Trinidad Castaneda voted in favor of firing Probolsky.

Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner was the sole vote in opposition, and Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung abstained. Huntington Beach’s representative on the power authority’s board, City Councilman Casey McKeon, was not present to weigh in at the meeting, and declined to comment on the matter Wednesday.

“I want to thank Mr. Probolsky for his efforts in creating this agency,” Castaneda said at the close of Wednesday’s meeting.

Treseder and other members of the board echoed those sentiments. They also expressed optimism in OCPA’s potential to grow and fulfill its mission of promoting affordable renewable energy in Orange County.

The OCPA began supplying power to residents in Huntington Beach, Irvine, Fullerton and Buena Park in October 2022. It had also been serving unincorporated communities, but the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to pull them out of the program in the wake of a grand jury report accusing the agency of a lack of transparency, as well as an audit that found a large portion of customers had opted out and returned to Southern California Edison.

As few as 77% of residents in communities participating in the program were getting their power from it as of February, according to a separate audit conducted by the state. The co-op’s goal was to serve 95% of the people in the neighborhoods they cover, and initial projections described a rate of 80% or below as a worst case scenario.

The state’s audit discovered nothing illegal in OCPA’s business practices. But it did scrutinize several contracts approved by Probolsky without going through a standard bidding process or proper oversight. About $1.27-million worth of work paid to three contractors had been split into smaller work orders that were able to fly under the radar of the agency’s board.

“I wish I could say I am pleased to see the Orange County Power Authority Board is finally beginning the necessary process to address the longstanding concerns of this agency, but there is much structural reform needed as outlined in our Internal Audit report,” Supervisor Katrina Foley wrote in a statement Wednesday.

State auditors noted that OCPA had entered into around $1-billion worth of contracts with energy suppliers. Many of those terms were negotiated prior to the county’s departure from the program, and the full impact of losing that customer base on communities that are still participating remains unclear.

“In just a few short years, the Orange County Power Authority has gone from one city’s vision to a fully operational community choice energy provider serving approximately 240,000 residential and commercial customers in four Orange County communities,” Jung wrote in a statement Wednesday. “Launching service just one year ago, OCPA is delivering on its promise to provide customers with renewable energy at competitive rates to address climate change. In fact, OCPA now offers the Basic Choice 38% renewable energy plan at a cost of 2% less than SCE’s equivalent generation rates.”

In Huntington Beach, McKeon, Mayor Tony Strickland and other members of a recently seated City Council have been debating whether their residents will remain a part of the green energy co-op. Their decision largely hinges on what sort of liability they may incur by leaving and an analysis of the contracts OCPA is currently tied up in. City officials only recently gained access to view those documents after coming to a non-disclosure agreement with the power authority’s administrators in February.

The possibility of staying or leaving in OCPA had been an item for discussion at several Irvine City Council meetings as well. However, council members noted that their city is the only one served by the agency that invested public funds to create it. They said it would be unlikely the city would leave the arrangement and expressed commitment to the green energy co-op’s growth in the future.

“I will do everything in my power to make sure Irvine stays in the OCPA for the foreseeable future,” Treseder said Wednesday.

Wagner, who cast the lone dissenting vote against Probolsky’s firing, said “I don’t think this will fix anything. I think this will create further instability in the future of the OCPA and green energy in Orange County.”

A response plan was created after numerous potential shortcomings were pointed out by several audits of the organization. Wagner believed they were on track to fix those issues. He added that he believed acquiescing to public pressure to remove Probolsky opened the door for the board to be influenced by outside forces and might deter qualified candidates who might have applied to replace him.

The supervisor noted that at least one prospective new hire for a different position at OCPA wound up declining their offer because of the controversy surrounding the agency.

Probolsky formally leaves his position at the end of May. The board hopes to appoint an interim chief executive by June 1.

“In the past 24 months, I helped Orange County Power Authority grow from an idea into one of California’s largest and greenest retail energy providers,” Probolsky wrote in a statement Wednesday. “This includes creating the brand, raising $42 million in credit facilities, and building a renewable energy portfolio worth more than $1 billion. As CEO, I hired a team of professionals as we launched this highly-regulated $300 million revenue energy provider with more than 250,000 customers to fulfill the promise of bringing renewable energy to Orange County at cheaper rates than Southern California Edison.”