Solar unfreeze

Members of Congress like knowing they get information on federal issues affecting their state before the public does.

So Sen. Reid was reportedly distressed when the Bureau of Land Management imposed a freeze on new solar plants on 119 million acres of federally managed land in six Western states and told the public first. “We read it in [the June 18] morning’s paper,” Reid aide Jon Summers told the Las Vegas Sun, which carried a story on that date about solar industry executives complaining about the freeze.

But rising publicity of the freeze—the New York Times was planning a story—made BLM have second thoughts, and the freeze was lifted last week.