LOCATION/TYPE

NEWS HOME

[ exact phrase in "" • results by date ]

[ Google-powered • results by relevance ]



Archive
RSS

Add NWW headlines to your site (click here)

Get weekly updates

WHAT TO DO
when your community is targeted

RSS

RSS feeds and more

Keep Wind Watch online and independent!

Donate via Paypal

Donate via Stripe

Selected Documents

All Documents

Research Links

Alerts

Press Releases

FAQs

Campaign Material

Photos & Graphics

Videos

Allied Groups

Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005.

News Watch Home

Hearings on wind farms will be welcome 

Credit:  By The Oregonian Editorial Board | August 26, 2013 | www.oregonlive.com ~~

With the school year about to start, now’s the perfect time to discuss a tax-credit blunder that will shortchange public schools and other services $20 million. The money has been used, instead, to subsidize a colossal wind farm, even as the state agency that was supposed to provide adequate oversight is telling taxpayers to move along. Nothing to see here.

Is this a great state or what?

The Shepherds Flat wind farm mess is the subject of extensive reporting by The Oregonian’s Ted Sickinger, whose work recently inspired Rep. Jason Conger, R-Bend, to request public hearings next month. Oregonians are unlikely to recover the lost tax revenue, but the hearings may produce some straight answers from some of the officials involved. They also may prevent similar mistakes from marring the state’s extensive backlog of applications under the since-tamed Business Energy Tax Credit (BETC) program.

The Shepherds Flat controversy involves a pair of problems, the first involving money and the second – and more vexing – involving a refusal to acknowledge the first.

At the heart of the money problem is the state’s decision to award the project three tax credits with a combined value of $30 million rather than the single tax credit worth $10 million to which it was entitled. Shepherds Flat began as one project that subsequently was broken up into three pieces in an attempt to maximize state subsidies, as Sickinger has reported. Even so, the three supposedly distinct projects retained enough characteristics of a single project to disqualify the slice-and-dice effort for tax credit purposes. For instance, the projects occupied adjacent pieces of land, used the same general manager to buy generation equipment from the same supplier and shared an electrical switching system. What’s more, they were financed under a single federal loan guarantee.

The state Energy Department approved the triple credit anyway, violating both state criteria and a common-sense principle former department director Lynn Frank has described as follows: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.” Frank later likened the Shepherds Flat project to “one duck cut into three parts” and asked, “Why was taxpayer money used this way? Good question. It deserves a good answer.”

But no such answer has been forthcoming even though the Energy Department recently reviewed its decision with the assistance of the state Justice Department. Energy Department officials gave their blessing, once again, to the inappropriate tax-credit bonanza while refusing to provide substantive information about the legal underpinnings of the decision.

“You’ll have to take our word for it, that we actually work with our attorneys and staff diligently,” department director Lisa Schwartz told Sickinger. “I’m not waiving client-attorney privilege.”

Taking the department’s word that it works with attorneys and staff diligently isn’t too hard. But taking its word that it’s making good decisions is another matter entirely, and that’s ultimately what Schwartz is asking taxpayers to do.

This is where Conger and other lawmakers can provide a valuable service during hearings next month. If Oregonians aren’t going to get their money back, they at least deserve to know the legal underpinnings of the department’s insistence upon calling a duck a hippopotamus. Conger’s request for hearings, sent this month to House Revenue Committee Chair Phil Barnhart, is encouraging in this regard. Such hearings, Conger wrote, should “provide public disclosure, discussion and accountability,” to which end he requests the participation of witnesses who “could provide insight into the economic justification, legal framework and approval process for the credits.”

Conger and his colleagues shouldn’t accept “take our word for it” for an answer. The extra $20 million taxpayers spent on this project entitles them to some specifics.

Source:  By The Oregonian Editorial Board | August 26, 2013 | www.oregonlive.com

This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.

The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.

Wind Watch relies entirely
on User Funding
   Donate via Paypal
(via Paypal)
Donate via Stripe
(via Stripe)

Share:

e-mail X FB LI TG TG Share


News Watch Home

Get the Facts
CONTACT DONATE PRIVACY ABOUT SEARCH
© National Wind Watch, Inc.
Use of copyrighted material adheres to Fair Use.
"Wind Watch" is a registered trademark.

 Follow:

Wind Watch on X Wind Watch on Facebook

Wind Watch on Linked In Wind Watch on Mastodon