Ag and Rural Caucus for July
| Link to recording: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/j0CRnCT-m72yPpVcOcBXteA4zbsHTvvnn_FiHpRO7QN9sbxmUXThkyqH12eSE7s.9qDiW9nhwEqzpBkL Link to last evening’s session. https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/yhhUXGucTw2hoJVfjV09tqdud5_OB9p1lnTircTim5jj0-_yLGiRKt0zEs3ZDrw.B2LbOWahvljlBz3C Note special session next Thursday. The session on County Incentives is not on our usual schedule. Policy Advocacy: Wind and Solar 6:30 pm Thursday 18 July Agrivoltaics Chad Higgins, OSU College of Agricultural Sciences 6:30 pm Thursday 25 July County Incentives https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85907982157?pwd=MU4vV3E3VGZ5VU02dnhvZjg2b3hKZz09 Paste link into browser. |
| Getting Counties and Developers to a Table Community Benefits Agreements. This is what we want, isn’t it. Or something like it. We want the counties to sit down and negotiate with developers. On the table would be the total amount of compensation, what part is in kind and what part is cash, and what the benefit profile over time looks like. A shared future should be on the table. This is tough to do in Washington. A developer has the choice of working with a county and its planning department, or seeking expedited disposition of their application with EFSEC (Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council) and the governor. EFSEC is not in the business of looking out for counties and their taxpayers. EFSEC does a lot of tasks very thoroughly but EFSEC does not husband county welfare. A county that has the capacity to evaluate a developer’s proposal is rare enough …then add the developer’s incentive to skip out and go to the state to get a fast and clean response. It is little surprise that counties have no leverage to get developers to the table to negotiate a Community Benefit Agreement. Now a pinch. It is at least theoretically possible to add to EFSEC things-to-do list. We could enlist EFSEC to host a forum that would bring counties and developers together. The pinch would be to foster negotiations without giving veto rights to either party. Mike McArthur, Community Renewable Energy Association (Oregon), is uniquely positioned to assess the different ways counties can access developers. He has been a county judge (commissioner), he has led the Oregon Association of Counties, and he now oversees a consortium of counties and developers committed to making wind and solar work for everyone involved. Our neighbors in Oregon sometimes wish they had our EFSEC to move projects along. And we wish we had the benefits that Oregon counties enjoy from wind and solar development. Join us tomorrow for a conservation and a mutual search for solutions. Don 24 July 2024 |
| Tax Shift: A story of Joe and Jill Homeowner living in George. Tax shift can be for real. Windmills and solar panels are taxed as personal property, not real property. Real property can gain in value, personal property disappears in depreciation. So, imagine a county, George, with a stable tax base generating a predictable revenue stream to George’s government. In comes a major windmill project. The tax base inflates with tax flowing from the new personal property. With Washington’s 1 percent lid on annual increase of property tax revenue, Joe and Jill Homeowners are happy. Their home may be worth a bit more each year but their assessment goes down and they pay less tax. The shiny windmills are paying it for them. At first. After ten years or so, the windmills depreciate out and are no longer paying Jill and Joe’s tax. And after ten years of George’s budget increasing at 1 percent each year to take advantage of the windfall from the new property – and stay up with inflation – the tax base reverts back to Jill and Joe. This is tax shift. The punch line is that Jill and Joe Homeowners can end up paying a good deal more tax while the shadows of the blades of the now-depreciated windmills sweep over their back deck. This is the scenario that Representative Ramel is trying to alter with his substitution of a flat production tax to replace (the state’s) declining personal property tax. Paul Jewell of the Washington State Association of Counties knows this scenario well. Read his organization’s study of tax shift. He is now organizing assessors, treasurers and commissioners around the state to find solutions. WSAC first documented tax shift. It is now trying to resolve it. We are all looking for solutions. Join us this Thursday. Don 23 July 2024 |
| A proposal – Tax production instead of property HB 1756, passed last session with bi-partisan support, exempts renewable energy personal property from state property tax. all qualified personal property owned by an eligible taxpayer and used for the generation of renewable energy is exempt from the state property tax levy. Is this a give-away to solar and wind developers? No. It replaces property tax with a production tax. Eligible taxpayers granted a personal property tax exemption under this act are subject to a production excise tax for the privilege of using qualified renewable energy generating systems The whole idea is to funnel money back to local governments. This bill provides a mechanism for the local government to earn back some of those lost revenues in a time where some of the local communities are struggling to meet the cost of inflation on their budgets. Is HB 1756 and a production excise tax a solution, even a partial solution, to making counties whole? Representative Alex Ramel was the primary sponsor of HB 1756. Let’s hear his thoughts. Join us this Thursday. Don 22 July 2024 |
| Money for Counties from Renewable? There is money in solar panels and windmills. There is money for the developer, there is money for the land owner, and there is money for local government. Money for local government? We in Washington have not seen much of it. Oregonians, on the other hand, welcome renewable energy development precisely because of the financial returns to the counties. So, what is the story? Thursday we are going to talk about how to return some of the economic “rent” to the counties hosting solar and wind developments. Our presenters are Mike McArthur, ED of Oregon’s Community Renewable Energy Association, Representative Alex Ramel, LD 40 Bellingham, and Paul Jewell, policy director of the Washington State Association of Counties. We are going to talk about how to structure licensing of renewable energy facilities so that local communities benefit. Rep. Ramel has authored legislation that helps. Up next. Join us this Thursday. Don 21 July 2024 |
| Sheep and Panels? For Real? Is agrivoltaics for real? Can we actually mix sheep, or vegetables, with solar panels? Chad Higgins, our guest Thursday, will bring us up to date what mixed use is actually installed and what is in the works. Chad’s day job is with the Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering at Oregon State. His research is “probing the spatial characteristics of atmospheric water vapor”. Chad knows the science, and he knows farming. Chad inspired the agrivoltaics that feature in the Hop Hill project in the Black Canyon region north of Sunnyside. The project is on hold at the moment. The siting was deemed inconsistent with Benton County’s land use regulations. The Hop Hill presentation assigns agrivoltaics a central role. Watch its video for a persuasive message. BrightNight, the developer behind Hop Hill, was an early advocate of agrivoltaics. It correctly understood the issue of taking ag land out of production, and crafted a plan to offset the effects of installing solar panels. Go to the project presentations and the video and evaluate BrightNight’s plans. Then join us Thursday to discuss the promise of agrivoltaics. Don 14 July 2024 |
| Decades to Recover? So why are we looking at soil quality and agrivoltaics as our first session? The answer is simple. It has become a graphic talking point used by opponents of solar. It goes back to last August. Kelly McLain, WSDA, wrote to EFSEC that the Carriger project just outside Goldendale was on prime agricultural land and that soft soils meant that Carriger would grade and gravel much of the site. On January 17 Carriger responded saying that the farm ground was not all that good. Besides, Carriger argued, “the Project’s solar arrays will generally follow existing contours within the MPE, requiring minimal grading…[and] only three percent of the project site would be “new, impervious surfaces”. Then came the headlines – McLain’s response a week later: “The impacts of the project include ground compaction, gravel additions to meet footing requirements, a long length of time for the project, and reduced opportunity for tillage, photosynthesis, irrigation, grazing, etc. throughout the life of the project… it may take decades for the agricultural viability issues to be remediated.” This is what made farmers shake their heads, and opponents cheer their new ally. Chad Higgins will lay out “the rest of story”. Join us. 7 July |
| Largest Solar Farm in the State Pre-pandemic, Ormand Hilderbrand and I attended the opening ceremony of the solar installation at Lind…Avista’s Adams Nielson Solar Farm. It was a grand affair with Governor Inslee, Congressman Newhouse, and Senator Schoessler in attendance. It was the largest solar farm in the state at that time, at about 200 acres. Times change. Our thinking in attending was to assess the ground preparation for the solar panels. Ormand had experience in Sherman County in Oregon of bad performance by the solar developer. There was excess ground leveling and a general desert under the panels. We wanted to see what was happening in Lind. Lind was different. The ground, taken out of CRP, was undisturbed and the development impact appeared minimal. This was before much attention was paid to soil consequences of solar development. It was a naïve installation. So, what does it look like today? I visited the site last week and took a photo from the Lind Cemetery, which is surrounded by the solar farm. Don 2 July 2024  |
| July Shift from Briefing to Advocacy Our Policy Briefings shed light on issues affecting rural communities around the state. The idea is to provide you information…the advocacy is up to you. (Of course, there is an advocacy nudge from the topics we choose to cover.) This July is different. We will have two Policy Advocacy meetings where we advocate a position. This position is in favor of wind and solar installations. The first Policy Advocacy session is about solar arrays and soil quality, and the consequences of solar installations for agricultural production. The second session is about the economic incentives for counties to promote wind and solar installations. This shift to advocacy for July follows the unfortunate politicization of wind and solar in central and eastern Washington. It does not have to be this way. We have a model in central Oregon where conservative counties are cheerleaders for wind and solar because of the revenue generated to build local public infrastructure. One goal is to have Washington commissioners to sit down with their Oregon counterparts, compare notes, and discuss what is required for Washington counties to profit from development. Don 29 June 2024 |
Our Better Practices roundtable is on the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm.. Use the link above for 2024.
Our Policy Series is on the third Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm. Use the link above for 2024.
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