According to PennLive, contracts totaling almost $2 million for the Dauphin County Industrial Development Authority’s solar farm were awarded to a business owned by former Dauphin County Commissioner Jeff Haste’s high school classmate.

According to documents, Haste’s classmate Bill Napikoski started preparatory work on the future location of the solar farm before the IDA had evaluated or acquired the property and before his business was properly established. Napikoski established Mid-Atlantic Green Builders, LLC two months later, and the IDA quickly engaged the company to handle the site’s construction. No past experience working on solar farms is mentioned in the documents detailing Napikoski’s professional background, which include court papers and material submitted to the county.

Haste, who was in office at the time, asked Assistant County Solicitor Guy Beneventano to meet with Napikoski, so he filed the paperwork creating the LLC for him in 2009. According to Beneventano, he acted in his capacity as a private lawyer and was unaware that the IDA was developing a solar farm or that the company would be contracted to work on it.

Since September 30, Napikoski has not answered any of PennLive’s many questions.

Regarding the business, Haste stated that he did not have any say in choosing Mid-Atlantic Green Builders to complete the project, although he did ask Beneventano if he might suggest Beneventano to Napikoski.

Haste played a key role in the development of the solar farm along with his other county commissioners.According to records, the commissioners requested that the IDA establish it, approved the county’s guarantee of millions more in debt that the IDA took on to construct it, and instructed the IDA to use millions more county funds to finance it.

Particularly interested was Haste, who had previously rented a home on land that the IDA would eventually buy for the solar farm from Coroner Graham Hetrick and Hetrick’s sister and brother-in-law, Leland Riley and Judith Riley. According to the Rileys, Haste spoke with them about building the project there.

Jeff Haste, former commissioner of Dauphin County, February 2, 2020.
Briner, Vicki Vellios | Exclusive to PennLiveBriner, Vicki Vellios | Exclusive to PennLive

The solar farm has been losing money for years and is now for sale, despite Haste and other county officials first hailing it as a cost-cutting measure that would benefit taxpayers. Despite investing over $8 million in total, the IDA only received one offer for the project, which is valued at $1.9 million. The sale is anticipated to be finalized in early November.

According to records, Mid-Atlantic Green Builders has received contracts from the IDA totaling at least $1.9 million over the previous 15 years, and the IDA continues to pay them. As the construction manager, in charge of operations and maintenance, and a middleman in the solar panel buying process, the company has been involved with the solar farm since its inception.

According to the county, the IDA has its own board of directors and is a legally distinct organization. However, the two are intimately related: Established by the county commissioners in 1967, the IDA serves as the county’s economic development department’s financial division. Its employees work for the county.

LaToya Winfield Bellamy, the IDA’s solicitor, responded that state law permits the IDA to buy specific products, like the solar panels, that are offered in a noncompetitive market or exclusively by a manufacturer’s authorized dealer, without a bidding process when asked if Mid-Atlantic Green Builders was hired to work on the solar farm without a competitive bidding process.

Bellamy refused to respond to several follow-up questions, such as whether Napikoski’s qualifications to lead the project were established, how he started working on the project site before his company was formally formed, and whether there were public bidding processes for other work he did on the solar farm, such as managing its construction, operations, and maintenance, and if not, how he was chosen for those jobs.

Contracts for other solar farm work, like electrical and fencing installation, were awarded through a competitive bidding process, according to documents that PennLive was able to obtain through a public records request. However, the contracts given to Mid-Atlantic Green Builders do not appear to have gone through any such procedure.

When questioned about the solar farm, August Skip Memmi, the IDA’s then-leader, stated that everything was done according to the book but refused to respond to any queries until his lawyer had reviewed them. Memmi said he was unable to respond to the questions PennLive sent him via email because it had been so long since the solar farm was established and he no longer had access to the IDA’s records.

Hiring timeline raises questions

Using court records, public company filings, meeting minutes, IDA records, and documents from an anonymous source, PennLive assembled a disjointed chronology of events. A complicated chronology that leaves more questions than it answers is shown by the paper trail.

Napikoski wrote to the IDA on May 6, 2009, requesting that the IDA work with Mid-Atlantic Green Builders to build the solar farm. A $411K cost breakdown for the land purchase and site preparations for the solar farm was provided in the letter. Mid-Atlantic Green Builders had not yet obtained a corporation registration.

The documents establishing Mid-Atlantic Green Builders, LLC for Napikoski were submitted by Beneventano two days later.

On May 11, 2009, three days later, Napikoski and Mid-Atlantic Green Builders bid $7 million to build the solar farm. Whether the company won that contract is unknown.

Haste was among the Dauphin County Commissioners who approved a $411K transfer to the IDA for the solar farm on May 13, 2009. The funds were obtained from a casino revenue tax.

The IDA received a $107K charge from Mid-Atlantic Green Builders the following day, which included work that had previously been finished in March and April before the company was ever founded. Even though the IDA had not yet bought the land, the finished work included site prep management and site pre survey measuring, marking, and orienting.

The IDA board of directors authorized a building services contract with Mid-Atlantic Green Builders on May 21, 2009, a week later.

The IDA completed the acquisition of the solar farm site from Hetrick and the Rileys in early 2010.

For $25K annually plus a 2% yearly increase, the IDA contracted Mid-Atlantic Green Builders in September 2011 to manage the operation and maintenance of the solar farm. The 2013 modification to that contract is still in force.

In October 2011, the solar farm was unveiled by the IDA.

Later, the IDA made the decision to increase the size of the solar farm, and for around $1.4 million in August 2012, it bought additional solar panels from Mid-Atlantic Green Builders, an authorized representative of the manufacturer SolarWorld Americas LLC.

Mid-Atlantic Green Builders was engaged in January 2013 to oversee the $200K expansion of the solar farm.

In October 2013, the solar farm’s second phase went online.

The solar farm is still maintained by Mid-Atlantic Green Builders. According to payment records, the IDA gave the business $63,000 in 2023, which included reimbursements for project-related expenses.

It erodes trust

The fact that Haste’s friend was awarded large contracts raises questions about unfairness, conflicts of interest, and if taxpayer money was wasted, according to government ethics experts who spoke to PennLive.

The optics of it just look like there s a series of conflicts of interest designed to benefit the personal and financial interests of some people, said John Pelissero, director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Furthermore, the way the facts are presented undermines the public’s trust in your county government, even if they are legitimate.

The timing of events and the fact that Napikoski was likely hired without a public bidding process are particularly concerning, said Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

This, in my opinion, goes honestly further than just cronyism, de Rugy said.

Napikoski and Haste graduated from Lewistown Area High School in 1977 as part of the school s first graduating class and played junior high football together in the fall of 1973, yearbooks show. The team s end-of-season record was 2-4. Later on, both of them went to Shippensburg University.

Some information about Napikoski’s employment background can be found in a 2017 court hearing. Before being hired to manage the solar farm, he was a sales manager for a supply company and one or two energy companies, as well as a manager for a garage door company. His testimony says he took several courses on solar energy, including a 2012 training at Harrisburg Area Community College, though it s unclear whether he took any such classes before he started working on the IDA s solar farm in 2009. At the time of the 2017 testimony, Napikoski was also working as a sales manager for the industrial supply company W.W. Grainger.

A document provided to the IDA by Mid-Atlantic Green Builders in 2009 describes the company as newly established and includes a brief description of Napikoski s experience in residential and commercial construction, but does not mention any experience in solar energy.

The public should be concerned when tax dollars are being used to help create a solar farm that then ends up being managed by a friend of the commissioner who doesn t really have experience in managing such, Pelissero said. Is it truly a wise use of public funds?

PennLive reporter Joshua Vaughn contributed reporting to this story.

Do you have information about Dauphin County you d like to share? Email the reporter, Juliette Rihl, [email protected] by encrypted email [email protected].

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