Ag and Rural Caucus for February
Better Practices
6:30 pm Thursday 6 February
Steve Starr, chair, Grant County
Changes in north central Washington - for the good?
Steve will talk about economic growth, changing demographics, and politics in Grant County. Along with growth around Moses Lake he will talk about the build-out of data centers around Quincy. And he will brief us on the direction of the Hispanic vote.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86197176823?pwd=6BIWfzuGjNJvviW6YvgbeDeLHKF8FA.1
Policy Briefing
6:30 pm Thursday 20 February
Dugan Marieb, Sr. Associate, Regulatory Affairs, Pine Gate Renewables
Making Community Benefit Agreements work for Counties
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85907982157?pwd=MU4vV3E3VGZ5VU02dnhvZjg2b3hKZz09
Paste link into browser.
Correction on Representative Ramel Proposal
I wrote below that under Representative Ramel’s proposal “the money [energy excise tax] flows to the state and a portion is returned to the local authorities.” This is not correct.
The correction is that under HB 1960 all the money flows back to local authorities. The portion that I wrote is “returned to local authorities” is only the grant portion. “The quarter that goes to the state is used to fund a grant program that’s designed to incentivize counties and developers to work together.”
The grant funding is 25 percent of the total amount returned to local authorities. The remaining 75 percent of the Renewable Energy Excise Tax is allocated by formula.
Don
19 February 2025
Recording note
You will notice tomorrow that the session is being recorded. The recording link will be made available to several legislators but otherwise will not be circulated. Just so you know.
Don
19 February 2025
Does Bargaining break Rules?
Listen closely Thursday. Dugan Magrieb, Pine Gates Renewable, will explain how his company and Morrow County developed an innovative agreement around his company’s solar energy plans and the county’s wheat industry.
What you will hear is a textbook example of bargaining. Textbook because each party works diligently to understand its counterparty with the idea of coming to a mutually agreeable solution.
What we want to learn from Dugan is how he and the county were able to work out a deal. The details themselves are important and interesting. What we need to figure out, though, is how they were even able to sit down to talk.
Washington’s EFSEC permitting process is valued because it is expedited and conforms to rules. What may be missing is an opening for counterparties to bargain, to arrive at mutually satisfactory agreements.
The “why” of bargained of community benefit agreements is easy – everybody wins. The “how” is tricky. How do we reconcile bargaining with bureaucracy? This is bureaucracy in the good sense of following even-handed, transparent rules. Policy-making in the good sense of serving the public may require “holes” in administrative law to allow old-fashioned backroom bargaining.
Let’s listen carefully Thursday and learn.
Don
18 February 2025
How to get Developers and Counties to the Same Table
So, what is the problem in Washington with counties striking a deal with developers? The problem is not the money. There is money enough in renewable energy to make counties comfortable. It is the declining profile of the personal property tax revenues and the eventual “tax shift” to resident taxpayers that gives Washington commissioners heartburn.
Tax shift, though, is just the beginning. The real rub is that developers in Washington do not have to work with local commissioners. Developers can ignore the local commissioners and seek “expedited” permitting through EFSEC (Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council). EFSEC operates under administrative law rule, for better or worse. There is county representation under EFSEC rules but developers face a predictable, bureaucratic process.
Local commissioners see that any time they make a developer uncomfortable, the developer charges out the front door to EFSEC.
It is no surprise, then, that many local commissioners in central Washington find political profit in siding with specious arguments against wind mills and solar panels. When they fail to shut wind and solar out because developers do their end run to EFSEC, they live with the tax windfall and harvest the gratitude of their embattled residents.
The policy question for us in Washington is how to create conditions to bring developers and local commissioners together to negotiate, in good faith, something like what Pine Gate Renewables and Morrow County have done.
One way would be to take EFSEC out and turn over permitting exclusively to the counties. No one has the stomach to do this. Few have confidence that counties would not abuse a veto right over renewable energy proposals. My bias is that “show them the money” and put faith in greed.
Representative Alex Ramel (LD 40; Whatcom County) has a different idea. He has legislation which relieves developers from paying property tax and, instead, charges them an excise tax based on capacity. The money flows to the state and a portion is returned to the local authorities. This may be a technical resolution to tax shift but it fails the red-blooded tests of returning political agency to the county commissioners. Still, credit Representative Ramel with trying to find a solution.
Next week, we will try to discover some magic sauce in the way Oregon does things to make possible the Morrow County – Pine Gate agreement. I suspect our Oregon friends will blush and claim it is just common sense, and exclaim how much they envy our EFSEC process.
Don
12 February 2025
Greedy Counties? Or Aggrieved Tax Payers?
Counties get property taxes from wind and solar, don’t they? Yes, but. The “but” is that wind turbines and solar panels are taxed as “personal” property. This means that instead of appreciating like your home they depreciate, like your 4 x 4.
A wind turbine spins tax dollars when it first starts up. Those tax dollars, though, do not keep up. The wind turbine continues to generate revenues for its owner but less and less goes to the county treasurer.
At the same time as the turbine and panel taxes taper off, county budgets increase, ballooned by the early flush of tax revenues.
Enter “tax shift” stage right. Tax shift is when legacy taxpayers – you and me – pick up the slack left by corporate America as their tax payments depreciate away, a little like Wiley Coyote running off the cliff.
Tax shift is why the Washington Association of Counties and Representative Axel Ramel are trying to figure out ways to level out the contributions developers return to hosting counties. And this is why we talking about “community benefit agreements” with Dugan Magrieb of Pine Gate Renewables. How did Pine Gate solve Morrow County’s tax shift problem?
Don
11 February 2025
Why not Washington?
Why are we taking up a solar farm case from Morrow County in Oregon?
Simple. The Republican county commissioners (“judges”) in the northern Oregon counties are enthusiastic supporters of wind and solar facilities – and their Republican colleagues north of the Columbia are dead set against wind and solar.
Community Benefit Agreements (CBA) are part of the answer. The name, CBA, is not always technically correct but the idea is the same. Provide counties a significant financial incentive, a community benefit, and it is easier for local commissioners to fact check claims that solar panels poison the soil or flicker from wind turbines causes epilepsy.
Pine Gate Renewables, developers of the Sunstone solar farm in Morrow County, authored an innovative CBA targeted at Morrow County’s wheat industry.
Is there something about Oregon’s institutions that make this kind of agreement possible? Dugan Marieb with Pine Gate will help us understand what it might take for rural Washington commissioners to champion renewable energy.
Don
10 February 2025
Morning After Notes
Steve did his homework for last evening. And he certainly delivered. Steve was provocative – he pushed buttons. What he delivered was uncomfortable and his friend Bob may not have been happy. So be it.
The recording is here. Also, https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/is_wvcqU01DxNe-bMMu0UgqdUHKoSWEzbO3CsQh1fGItJN3Dsuu_CAj7fDHNW5HF.ZYndfrLGOnB3MVtA
Steve indicted identity politics, and with cause. I would like to add to his point. We can re-direct our message to delivering kitchen-table policy without closing the kitchen door. We need to retain our value that everyone has a place at the table when we serve up housing, jobs, and food, personal security and dreams for a better life. We do not close the door to different colors or creeds even when we may want to see ourselves in the faces around the table. You may not want to call it diversity but there is value in mashing different ideas and perspectives along with the potatoes. Last night was an example.
Because Steve was provocative, I want to add a point of fact-checking. The record of Joe Biden’s immigration policy was not quite as the dominant narrative tells us. We did a very thorough review of the data in December 2023. Search for the data on the ARC website. In our 2023 meeting, Ann Marie Danimus offered the criticism that the Democratic congress failed to fund and staff the necessary courts and bureaucracy to make an effective immigration policy work. That criticism was on the mark. Slogans are not the answer to immigration issues. And immigration is not going away. Climate change, economic differentials, and labor demand argue for US leadership in figuring out a just, compassionate, and smart immigration administration.
On another point I failed to come up with data. I ask for your help. Fox News, as Steve reported, is alive with stories about how transgender women athletes are injuring cisgender women athletes on the playing fields, whether volleyball or rugby. What is the actual record?
Don
7 February 2025
Steve and Bob join forces
Governor Ferguson and Steve Starr have the same idea. Steve, Grant County chair and ARC expert, will talk to us tomorrow about what is happening in north central Washington. He was going to touch on the employment effects of data centers in Quincy. Bob thinks Steve is on the right track.
The Governor yesterday “signed an executive order forming a team to evaluate the impact of data centers on energy use, state tax revenue and job creation.” The team will take up how much energy data center use and whether job promises are kept. And at what expense.
Is this an example of energy colonialism complaining about who gets to exploit cheap real estate and cheap power in eastern Washington? Or at dig at the legislature for rejecting transparency measures to release employment data? Or just good government? I prefer the good government read.
Here is ProPublica’s article. And the Seattle Times.
Don
5 February 2025
Our Better Practices roundtable is on the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm.. Use the link above for 2025.
Our Policy Series is on the third Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm. Use the link above for 2025.
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