AUGUSTA — The good news for the Maine Green Energy Alliance is that after a two-plus-hour grilling Thursday before the Legislature’s Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee, no one has yet stepped forward and flat-out accused the fast-fading organization of doing anything illegal.

The bad news is that the fun, at least for the Republicans who now control the State House, has just begun.

“It’s just one of those situations where I think there was a certain level of naivete,” said Rep. Stacey Fitts, R-Pittsfield, a committee co-chair, after the lengthy session. “And also experienced people that should have known better than to have a situation that appears to be somewhat tainted.”

Translation: Perception, at least in politics, sometimes trumps reality. And the alliance, a heavily Democratic operation that blossomed and quickly wilted in the political tsunami that swept across Maine last fall, has a whopper of a perception problem on its hands.

The story, first reported last month by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, is fast becoming a textbook example of how to look bad while presumably doing good.

Founded by Tom Federle, a former legal counsel to Gov. John Baldacci, the Maine Green Energy Alliance received $1.1 million in August from the federal Department of Energy to schedule energy audits for homeowners in eight target communities around Maine and then help those homeowners complete energy-conservation retrofits on their dwellings.

Under the supervision of Executive Director Seth Murray, the alliance didn’t exactly hit the ground running.

By the time it folded last month and agreed to hand the $500,000 (give or take) left in its coffers to the Efficiency Maine Trust — which oversees home weatherization efforts statewide and served as the conduit for the alliance’s federal grant — the alliance had tallied 200 energy audits and only 50 retrofits.

In other words, it wasn’t even close to its stated goal of 1,000 retrofits in its first year.

During the same six-month period, the alliance’s staff of process facilitators, field organizers and community outreach organizers had grown to 13 people. Of the $355,836 the organization spent through the end of 2010, nearly half went to salaries.

Which brings us back to that perception problem.

As reported by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, seven of those staff members had “strong connections” to the Democratic Party. And four of those Democrats, including three incumbents, were running for the Legislature last fall, at the same time they were working for the taxpayer-funded alliance.

Let the supercharged speculation begin.

“My biggest concern is that they used taxpayer money to do politicking,” said Charles Webster, chairman of the Maine Republican Party, in a hallway conversation outside Thursday’s legislative committee meeting.

And how might Webster define “politicking?”

“Going door to door, and paying people to do it, in districts where (Republicans) believe we could have won seats,” Webster replied. “And they spent taxpayers’ money to prop up their incumbents.”

Now bear in mind there’s not a shred of evidence to support that claim. No testimony from homeowners that they were victims of political arm-twisting, no tell-tale political fliers tucked inside alliance brochures, no nothing.

Nor could Webster back up two other salvos he’s fired in recent days — both aimed squarely at the notion that this is a full-blown scandal in the making.

The first involves House Minority Leader Emily Cain, D-Orono, who had the alliance do an audit on her home last fall — and paid for it in full. That didn’t stop Webster, in a press release Tuesday, from calling for the Attorney General’s Office to look into what “looks like a slush fund for Democrats.”

(A footnote: Among those pushing back against Webster’s attack on Cain was none other than Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who told reporters the next day that he spoke with Cain and “I buy it. I believe her. I have no reason not to. And I support what she said.” Do we detect tension in the GOP leadership?)

Webster’s second ready-fire-aim came on Wednesday, when he wondered in another press release whether Murray, the alliance’s executive director, was “double dipping from taxpayer funds” by running the alliance on one hand and owning Healthy Homes Maine, a home weatherization contractor, on the other.

One problem: As Murray told the committee Thursday, he shut down Healthy Homes Maine upon landing his job with the alliance. Hard as Webster might labor to suggest that Murray funneled work from the now-defunct alliance to his now-defunct company, there’s no evidence of any actual fire behind Webster’s smoke-filled insinuation.

But if the standing room crowd for Thursday’s committee meeting was any indication, there is plenty of buzz surrounding this ever-widening drama. And with the GOP now at the controls, it’s only going to get louder.

Speaking to the media as the session broke up, co-chair Fitts said the committee next will likely hold a workshop to digest all of the data requested of the alliance.

And after that?

“I’m not anticipating the committee writing a letter to (the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices) over it, but it could happen, depending on how the work session goes,” Fitts said.

He later added, “Maybe it is something that we do pass on to ethics.”

Whether that happens or not, much of the damage already has been done. The ever-important public perception, reality-based or not, is that the alliance and Maine’s Democrats still have some serious explaining to do.

Starting with the claim, as expressed by Murray before the committee Thursday, that political titles or affiliations had absolutely no bearing on his hiring decisions.

And with the Democrats’ astounding inability, in the middle of a hotly contested election year, to see this train wreck coming.

Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at:

bnemitz@mainetoday.com