Pence denied request to help Carrier in 2014

Vice President-elect Mike Pence reportedly refused to help Carrier in 2014 when he denied a request from the company to veto a bill rolling back Indiana’s energy efficiency program.

Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies — along with GE, Johnson Controls and Honeywell — asked Pence in a joint letter sent in March 2014 to not support the bill, Politico reported Thursday.

{mosads}In the letter, the group said that rolling back the energy program would take away about 380 direct jobs and more than 1,200 indirect jobs.

The request was focused on protecting the Energizing Indiana program. The program gave buyers reduced costs for lighting products, free residential walk-through efficiency audits and rebates for installing energy efficiency equipment, according to the report.

“Jobs have been lost and we’re not seeing the kind of investment and the kind of energy savings that we saw when we had Energizing Indiana and the efficiency targets in place,” said Kerwin Olson, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition, one of the groups that fought to keep the program, according to Politico.

President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday took a victory lap, celebrating a deal with Carrier to keep more than 1,000 factory jobs in Indiana that were slated to move to Mexico.

Carrier’s parent company will receive $7 million worth of tax breaks over a decade as part of the deal to keep jobs in the U.S., while Carrier will also reportedly invest $16 million to keep operations in the state. Hundreds of jobs will still move to Mexico, however.

“I want to let all the other companies know that we are going to do great things for business, there’s no reason for them to leave anymore,” Trump said from Carrier’s plant in Indianapolis.