From: Robert (Robin) B. Mills IVth
1233 12th Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 682-4282, robinmills4@yahoo.com
February 1, 2001
Dear friends,
I have just received the ruling from the Securities and Exchange Commission. They have given me an almost complete victory for my Invest in Clean Energy (ICE) Proposal. This first ruling should be an indicator for what the next rulings will be.
Constellation Energy Group, Inc. is the holding company for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., a Maryland electrical energy provider serving 1.1 million customers. Constellation had three reasons for omitting the ICE proposal from their proxy statement; 1. It violated state law, 2. It was ordinary business that the board of directors should exercise and, 3. Constellation had already achieved clean energy because 32% of their energy comes from emission free nuclear power. The SEC ruled against Constellation on points 2 and 3 outright.
On point 1. the SEC said that Maryland state law would not allow a proposal that was mandatory on the board of directors, but that if the proponent (me, Robin Mills) changed the proposal to a recommendation to the board, that it was then legal, and they allowed me to make the change now, long after the deadline has passed. The revised proposal as it should appear on the proxy statements of the quarter million Constellation stockholders is enclosed (next page).
The Constellation shareholders annual meeting is April 26th, 2001 in Baltimore (downtown). About half the company is owned by a couple hundred shareholders, mutual and pension funds, whose managers vote large blocks of stock.. The other half of the company is owned by 250,000 small investors, many of whom live in Maryland.
Decisions are still to come for the ICE proposal at the Duke Energy and the Southern Company attempts to omit the proposal, in the coming weeks. Exelon Corporation and Progress Energy have not objected to having the proposal on their proxy statements as of this time. Together the five companies have about 2 million shareholders and control over 10 million electric customers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida and Illinois.
Please contact me for more information.
Sincerely,
Robin B. Mills