CCCOG hears about the wind

The Carbon County Council of Governments (CCCOG) held a rescheduled meeting that had been originally planned for Nov. 18 but was canceled due to a snowstorm.

The council met at 6 p.m. on December 18 at the Jeffery Center in Rawlins. The meeting was scheduled a half hour earlier than the regular time and, at 6 p.m., there were not enough attendees for a quorum. Leroy Stephenson called in at 6:30 p.m. and the meeting started. Jon Nelson arrived shortly after.

Elk Mountain, Hanna, Medicine Bow, Saratoga, Riverside and Rawlins all had representatives once the meeting finally started.

The regular meeting minutes of September 18 were approved as were the financials.

The next order of business was a presentation by Kara Choquette from Power Company of Wyoming for the TransWest project. She gave a Wyoming wind taxation update.

“The beginning of the year the Joint Revenue Committee at the legislature decided to look at this idea of taxing electricity and wind generated electricity,” Choquette said. “There was a decision to hear from the University of Wyoming Center of Energy Economics and Public Policy that had done another study looking at the competitive situation relative to other states.”

She said the Revenue Committee heard the presentation in July. The analysis is that Wyoming is not the lowest cost state in the West. It comes in number four as lowest cost state.

There was no action taken in July by the Revenue Committee at their meeting. She said the September meeting was different. At the end, there were several efforts to introduce an electricity tax, although most failed. Choquette said it was apparent through a voice vote on a bill being introduced that would tax but give credits there was still desire by some on the committee to tax electricity in some form.

She said the bill was complicated once it was posted on October 29. Choquette said the tax would have taxed the coal generation into possible extinction in addition to giving all funds received to the State and none to the county where the electricity was generated.

When the Revenue Committee met on Nov. 12, after three hours of testimony on how this tax hurt the State in the long run, no person on the committee member made a motion to introduce the bill.

“This is the sixth time the idea of a wind tax has been voted down or died,” Choquette said. “I think the thing for CCCOG members moving forward, I don’t think the idea won’t be revived again.”

She said nobody should be surprised to see a tax introduced on solar or wind energy. The real problem for communities that are impacted is these new tax ideas haven’t distributed money to the local level.

“This is exactly why, in 2010, the wind generation tax was put in. The purpose of that was to address this situation with a 60 percent allocation to just the counties that were hosting the wind farms,” Choquette said. “So, Carbon County is going to be getting more wind tax revenue as you see more wind farms being built because you are increasing that assessed valuation upon on which all that pot of money is being divided out. The State gets it 40 percent.”

She said wind energy companies want certainty and stability in tax policy and the bills that come up make this difficult.

Hanna representative Bob Patton said the introduction of these bills costs the taxpayers money.

Stephanie Lane, Carbon County Economic Development Corporation (CCEDC) Director suggested to CCCOG members that the group and communities should tell their legislative representatives to show how these taxes would hurt their towns. She said it would be smart to be proactive versus reactive.

“My advice is to get ahead of it,” Lane said.

Choquette said the impact money from Chokecherry Wind project helped several communities. She said family ranches are also benefitting from leasing of land without interfering with the ranch itself.

“Life revolves around money and it is nice to see that some of these family heritages and long term businesses are not going to go away,” Scott Hammond, Rawlins City Manager said. “That is a real human connection to the wind turbines that doesn’t get enough attention.”

Choquette thanked CCCOG for the opportunity to speak.

The last order of business was to set the meeting places for the next year. Baggs, Saratoga, Rawlins, Sinclair and Medicine Bow will be hosting in 2020.

Dues for the municipalities will be sent out in the next week.

The next meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. on January 15 in Rawlins.