Wyoming Capitol Outlook

One of the topics we have covered again and again on Capitol Outlook has been the battle between Wyoming and the federal government over the state’s plan to manage wolf populations – the feds say it doesn’t do enough to protect the endangered wolf; Wyoming digs in its heels and won’t budge. A very expensive stalemate.

So it may have surprised some when Wyoming landed a leading role in the decision today (Friday) by the Obama Administration not to list the sage grouse as a threatened or endangered species – despite recognition that there are only a tenth as many birds as there were a century ago.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recognized the work of Wyoming, home to the bird’s most abundant population, as leading the way in conserving the species. Even the New York Times lauded Gov. Dave Freudenthal for the policy of identifying and protecting “core areas” for sage grouse.

The sage grouse will be listed as a “candidate” species with annual reviews to see how it’s faring. We’ll talk to Freudenthal – and a panel of legislators – about that decision on Capitol Outlook this week.

One the topics we have covered again and again on Capitol Outlook has been the battle between Wyoming and the federal government over the state’s plan to manage wolf populations – the feds say it doesn’t do enough to protect the endangered wolf; Wyoming digs in its heels and won’t budge. A very expensive stalemate.

So it may have surprised some when Wyoming landed a leading role in the decision today (Friday) by the Obama Administration not to list the sage grouse as a threatened or endangered species – despite recognition that there are only a tenth as many birds as there were a century ago.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recognized the work of Wyoming, home to the bird’s most abundant population, as leading the way in conserving the species. Even the New York Times lauded Gov. Dave Freudenthal for the policy of identifying and protecting “core areas” for sage grouse.

The sage grouse will be listed as a “candidate” species with annual reviews to see how it’s faring. We’ll talk to Freudenthal – and a panel of legislators – about that decision on Capitol Outlook this week.

It’s all over but the shouting – after four weeks of work, the 60th Wyoming Legislature will shortly fold its tent, and a good many legislators, and executive branch folks, will head out for a few stiff drinks and some shouting…back and forth about what they did and didn’t accomplish.

But first, a Thursday afternoon meeting of the Management Council to talk about interim studies – the work that goes on for legislators during the break. These are meetings held at various places around the state –sadly, not in Cancun – to consider issues that were raised but not acted upon, for lack of enough information.

So, for example:

• The Joint Judiciary Committee will continue the state’s exploration of wind energy issues – looking at property rights regarding wind production;
• The Joint Appropriations Committee will meet to discuss COLA’s (cost of living allowances), the raises that state employees and retirees have come to expect during the boom years – but which may be harder to come by in the frugal future;
• A back log in permitting at the Department of Environmental Quality – affecting everything from uranium to wind farms to coal bed methane to pesticides – will be studied by the Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee;
• The somewhat incomprehensible system for choosing which school districts get to build new buildings will lead to an organization plan for the School Facilities Commission, which will be submitted by the select Committee on School Facilities to the Joint Appropriations Committee come September.

But the committees who submitted their interim plans to the Management Council left out some of the more troublesome issues which the legislature was unable to wrestle into submission this session. To name only two:

• What to do about funding the major repairs needed to make Interstate 80 safe and navigable (it’s a federal freeway, but the feds aren’t paying the freight – a toll road proposal got shot down during this session);
• The state’s poor workplace safety record remains an embarrassment (bills to raise fines for workplace accidents due to employer negligence died, as did an attempt to raise the cost of driving without a seatbelt on – since many workplace injuries take place while driving).

It was a tired afternoon in the committee room – a few solons sniffled with the bugs often picked up during a session. The interim studies seemed as nondescript as this quiet session often did, and the council did no more than rearrange the order of a few.

Struggling to stay awake during the discussion of interim topics, I could imagine the meetings that lie ahead in spring, summer and fall– fluorescent lights, repetitive testimony, talk talk talk – in other words, more of what we’ve just been through. No one mentioned the brilliant suggestion of one legislator who wants to deepen understanding of water issues in the Wind River drainage by studying the headwaters – that is, a climb up Gannett Peak.

No, that one wasn’t budgeted in the list of interim studies. But we’re going to do it anyway.

One of the few surprises of the session – and an action that may have repercussion sat the federal and state level – was the defeat Tuesday of a bill that would have dramatically increased penalties against employers when workers are injured or killed due to willful violation of workplace safety laws.

The bill (HB 93), which passed the House with a near-unanimous vote, would have raised the amount of civil penalties against employers when a worker dies to workplace violations from $70,000 to $250,000. Civil penalties per violation where no death occurred could have gone up from a low of $5,000-70,000 currently to as high as $120,000. The bill made it to third reading in the Senate and died on a 15-15 vote.

The bill was drafted in response to Wyoming’s high rate of death and injury in the workplace, highlighted in recent years by accidents on oil and gas drilling projects. In 2007, the state led the nation in worker deaths, with 17 deaths per 100,000 workers, many involving transportation accidents. The injury rate improved in 2008, but sponsor Rep. Roy Cohee (R-Casper), who owns a trucking firm, said the bill would remind even small employers that “if you’re going to employ people in this state…you do owe some responsibility for a safe workplace.”

Judge Gary Hartman, who covers workplace safety issues for Gov. Dave Freudenthal, said the failure to act at the state level could lead to harsher penalties at the floor level set by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Paul Ulrich, representing Encana Oil and Gas, voiced support for the bill, telling the Associated Press, “We have an embarrassing fatality rate, and we need to do more, much more.” But Sen. Kathryn Sessions, D-Cheyenne, claimed that major players in the energy industry – even those who had publicly endorsed the bill– were lobbying against it behind the scenes.

Interviews with senators both for and against the bill suggest the big industry players were not that active –but it’s the smaller operators, often subcontractors, who the bill was actually aimed at. “It’s ‘Bob’s Meth Oil and Gas’,” said one House member, who gets a pass on identification for a casual remark in the hallway.

Opponent Sen. Eli Bebout(R-Riverton) said the bill would harm small businesses, and Sen. Charlie Scott(R-Casper) said that historically the federal OSHA had crippled businesses with “punitive” fines. Scott noted that most of the injuries were incurred while driving, and thought it was more suitable to increase fines for failing to use a seatbelt. That bill (SF 64) was still alive.

The governor signed into law today a bill that creates an official “Code of Wyoming” based on the “Code of the West” promulgated by author James Owen – a career investment guy from California who apparently wrote up his “cowboy ethic” idea as a guide for his Wall Street friends.

Despite this iffy pedigree, the legislature embraced Owen’s 10 Commandment code, which begins with “Live Each Day with Courage”, gallops through “Ride for the Brand,” and ends with “Know Where to Draw the Line.”

After considerable speechifying at the governor’s bill signing – which echoed considerably more speechifying on the House floor – Rep. Pat Childers (R-Cody),an ardent supporter, waved a card with the “Code of the West” in my face and pointed to dictum #8: “Talk Less and Say More.”

Yes indeed. Sponsor Rep. Lisa Shepperson (R-Casper) may have been the only one to take that to heart. Given the microphone at the bill signing, she said only: “I’ll just say ditto. And we’ve all talked about the cowboys, but don’t forget the cowgirls.”

Sen. Charlie Scott (R-Casper) has made health care issues his specialty – even wrote a book about it – and last year advanced his solution, in pilot form: a program that would offer health insurance to a few working people with low incomes, with incentives to practice preventive health care, health savings account, and other innovations, at a cost of $2 million.

With the support of Gov. Dave Freudenthal, it passed the Senate, then died amidst rancorous debate in the House, by one vote (and Democrats note that one of their brethren, a supporter, was absent for that vote).

Scott was furious, and maybe heartbroken (we had him as a guest on Capitol Outlook the night of the 2009 defeat), but he came back again this year with the bill –some modifications, a lower price tag ($750,000), and more support. After passing the Senate, it picked up a previous opponent, Rep. Kermit Brown(R-Laramie), who told House colleagues yesterday: “This program is designed to teach people to make proper decisions about health care.” Added Rep. Dave Bonner (R-Powell): “It would change the mindset from practicing sick care to seeking good health.”

The program would start very small – 500 people – and then could expand, if it’s deemed successful. But once again, on first reading in the House, objections began to fester. Rep. Keith Ginghery (R-Jackson) raised questions about paying for the program, as the bill proposes, with Tobacco Settlement Funds (money sent to Wyoming in 1998 as part of a nationwide settlement with tobacco companies). Majority Leader Edward Buchanan(R-Torrington) warned against “throwing something against the wall to see if it sticks.”

The bill will be up for second reading shortly. I’m not sure I want to be around Sen. Scott during that ordeal.

It’s been a quiet week at Lake Woebegone…the session is coming to an end, with little battling over the budget, and only a few controversial bills. Committees are meeting to decide what they’ll study over the interim before the 61stLegislature convenes in 2011.

One lingering area of budget disagreement between the House and Senate is over school facilities. After years of tremendous growth – hundreds of millions spent annually on new schools – spending is tightening, and the Joint Appropriations Committee struck four projects off the lengthy list of proposals approved by the state’s School Facility Commission. The House put those four elementary schools back on the building list with a budget amendment. When Senate and House budget bills are reconciled, it’s rumored that the solons will compromise: two of the four cut schools will go forward with state funding.

Also in the Senate version of the budget is another project from very low down on the SFC list, that wouldn’t normally be funded: completion of a middle school and high school in the Big Horn School District #1. Although the House refused to fund that work, observers think it’s likely to get through the budget conference, given that it’s in the district of the House Appropriations Committee chair, Rep. Rosie Berger (R-Sheridan).

When the Select Committee on School Facilities met this morning to talk about interim work, the first thing they agreed upon is that the public is non-plussed and rather angry about the process for approving and funding new schools in Wyoming. It used to be a local decision – school districts floated bond issues, and if the local voters approved, property taxes paid for a new high school. But since the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that every student must have a safe and uncrowded school, funding for schools has flowed through Cheyenne, supposedly evening the playing field for poorer school districts.

Is this an improvement over the old way? Old schools that might still be serviceable are torn down because they are the wrong size. A school that isn’t urgently needed gets funded because plans are ready, while a more needed facility is held up because it’s not “shovel-ready”. Said Rep. Owen Petersen(R-Mountain View), “Most people don’t know how the process works.”

The committee will study the process over the break, and several members hope that in the future school construction will go through the legislature as quietly as the annual water omnibus bill does, funding millions in dams and ditches around the state. But it may be tougher to salve the passions of parents and trustees and voters who used to control the fate of the school buildings where so many community activities take place. “It’s going to take two generations to change the culture,” said Rep. Elaine Harvey(R-Lovell).

In the meantime, noted Sen. Hank Coe (R-Cody), the building spree may have to slow as state revenues dry up, and the legislature takes a more “realistic” approach to what can be afforded. For the moment, Coe added, “We’re tearing down better schools than most of the country has.”

On Tuesday, and today, the full House and Senate each heard dozens of amendments to the $2.9 billion budget. You keep a cheat sheet handy, and run back and forth between chambers. But you’re bound to miss something – the Senate will be working on an amendment to limit funding for school bus travel on one side, while the House is deciding whether to add $200,000 to design a bypass highway between Green River and Rock Springs. Lobbyists, who can be a little more focused than journalists, are hard at work, sometimes even writing the remarks legislators will make when proposing amendments.

There is much at stake in this budget end game. Amendments will be offered over two readings of the bill. Here are just a few of the amendments that could make, or could have made, a real difference somewhere in the state:

• The Big Horn Middle School needs $3.6 million to complete remediation on a middle school and high school, a project that fell out of favor with the School Facilities Commission, which ranks schools for state funding based on sometimes changing criteria. An amendment would step outside the SFC list to provide that funding. Rep. Matt Teeters was one of several legislators who expressed sympathy but insisted schools needed to play by the same rules, noting that in his district “the school in Lingle has asbestos and they have to carry kids in wheelchairs to the second floor.” The House voted the Big Horn school funding down.
• Homeowners in Rock Springs on the so-called “Tree Streets” saw cracks appear in 2007 in their walls when the state tried “dynamic compaction”– smashing the ground with huge weights to solidify it against subsidence from abandoned mines. The state says it wants to repay them for damages, but they didn’t like the estimates made by a state-hired civil engineer, so they’ve come back looking for $120,000 to hire a structural engineer, using federal Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) funds. When a bill passed the House but failed on a tie vote in the Senate, Sen. John Hastert (D- Green River) brought it back as a budget amendment. The Senate approved.
• The Children’s Hospital in Denver sometimes treats seriously ill Wyoming kids, and it’s been in a heated dispute with Wyoming’s Medicaid program over reimbursement. An amendment by Sen. Wayne Johnson (R-Cheyenne) doesn’t mention the hospital by name, it just allows the Governor to take money from the General Fund for “critical care services not otherwise available from in-state providers.” I understood this because the hospital’s distracted lobbyist thrust a copy of their ‘information’ into my hand (usually these go only to legislators, and you have to beg for them). The Senate didn’t bite.
• Local governments face budget shortfalls and a big decline in state funds – from about $400 million for cities and counties during the boom years, to about $60 million in Gov. Freudenthal’s current budget – and a House amendment would nudge that amount back up just a bit. Noting that the legislature is acting strangely frugal this year, and noting there was about $18 million still on the table (in addition to $93 million that will go into the untouchable budget reserve account), the House voted to add another $10 million to the local government funding for the upcoming biennium.

There’s much more, of course –large stacks of amendments that will keep the solons at work late tonight – but it’s impossible to track it all until the end of the day, when the Legislative Service Office will issue a “goldenrod” sheet showing how much has been spent and how much is left.

The interesting – and sometimes amusing – debate over whether to buy a new warehouse for the state Liquor Commission led to some fancy parliamentary footwork in the Senate today. The issue is twofold: whether to spend $13million for a larger warehouse while real estate is cheap and the state’s appetite for fine wine is growing; and then whether to make liquor purchasers cover the cost with a special tax on liquor bottles, or pay for it some other way. The argument is that the building will be used for other purposes besides liquor (weights and balances, for instance), and the liquor purchases already provide a strong revenue stream to the government, based on a 17 percent markup at the wholesale warehouse.

Sen. Eli Bebout (R-Riverton) brought an amendment to cancel the purchase altogether, after a visit to the current warehouse, which seemed well run and in good shape.(Bebout was quick to say his visit to the liquid repository did not include doing “anything we shouldn’t have done.”) When Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander) didn’t vote because of a conflict (he has a liquor license at his motel), the amendment passed 15-14, because passage doesn’t require a majority of the full Senate, only of those voting.

But two amendments later, another amendment, brought by Sen. Tony Ross (R-Cheyenne) proposed to buy the building after all, without raising the price of Chardonnay. Ross’ amendment takes the money from the Budget Reserve Account – with supporters arguing that the sale of liquor, of which the state takes a 17 percent cut, would pay the cost back. Once again, Sen. Case demurred, and this amendment passed 15-14, trumping Bebout’s approach.

It’s bad enough that pine bark beetles are turning Wyoming forests rust brown. Now there’s a pesky little mollusk, the zebra mussel – originally from Russia, wouldn’t you know – that’s spreading through North America on the bottoms of boats, and threatening to enter Wyoming waters. The mussels tend to take over, clogging up pipes, cluttering lake bottoms, and cutting up the feet of anyone who tries to walk on them. They can also carry some serious avian disease.

The Wyoming Game & Fish Department and the Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources are trying to cut the zebras off at the boat ramp, at the cost of a few million to inspect watercraft, charge fees and put stickers on clean-bottomed boats.

There’s no guarantee, even with the $2.5 million that would be invested under House Bill 18, that they can stop the little invaders, said Parks and Cultural Resources Director Milward Simpson. And once the “aquatic invasive species” get a foothold, or a valve-hold, said Game & Fish’s Steve Ferrell, we would have to switch to a more expensive “containment program.”

Game and Fish contemplates watercraft inspection stations at Flaming Gorge Reservoir, Glendo Reservoir, Fremont Lake, Buffalo Bill Reservoir, Keyhole Reservoir, Jackson Lake Dam, and 17 other sites around the state.

Regionally, only Wyoming, Idaho and Montana remain free of the non-native mussels.

Rodeo life for all the but the top tier riders is a tough life, not just in the saddle, but in cheap hotels and on long trailer-pulling road trips. And in today’s tough economy, it can only be tougher.

Butten cowboys from Wyoming will have it a little easier - well, a lot, actually - if an amendment to the budget to fund the “Cowboy Marketing Program” continues to move forward, as it did in the Senate this week. The program, run by Wyoming Travel & Tourism, will put these fellows under contract to go out there and compete at rodeos in riding, roping, and even clowning (bullfighting).

Apparently the state tourism department has been scraping together a budget to underwrite rodeoing for some time from leftovers in other programs. Now, though, it could be a line item in the biennium budget. At a cost of $261,900, we become “the first, and only, state to sponsor pro-rodeo athletes,” according to the tourism folks, who do the magic tourism math and come up with media coverage for the team bringing a “total ad value” to the state of $715,295.90.

A question, Wyoming: have you put up a new school in your town recently? Chances are you have – the education building binge has been revving in high gear for years now, and many school districts have some nice new bricks and mortar. Whether they’ve produced smarter, better-prepared students is a matter of heated debate.

The building spree was driven by the Wyoming Supreme Court’s dictates to equalize education statewide – that apparently means everyone gets a new basketball court. And it has been funded largely by the huge severance tax revenues collected during the state’s decade-long energy boom.
But last night, as the Senate began work on the massive biennium budget bill, Sens. Phil Nicholas (R-Laramie) and Mike Massie (D-Laramie) posed some difficult questions about what it means if we continue. Nicholas, presenting a budget that would cut four elementary school building projects off a still lengthy building priority list, explained the complex way that the state prioritizes and phases such school construction – and what it can lead to. For instance, Natrona County high school projects that take a $14 million bite out of this budget are only phase 1 of three phases – each of which will have substantial price tags (and there’s talk of building a new $40 million high school in Casper down the road). There are planning funds for an alternative high school in Gillette, an elementary school in Lander, two elementary schools in Cheyenne…with, one would think, expensive building to follow. And much more.

More daunting, though, was the issue Sen. Massie brought up: though school construction comes out of a School Capital Construction Account, that money is interlaced with the School Foundation Program Account – which pays for education itself. And as Massie told his colleagues: if we spend and spend every dollar we can on school construction, “we may not have any dollars to put inside the buildings.”

Recalibration is the rather quiet gorilla in the room. Next year, the state will begin ‘recalibrating’ the model that delivers education services to students. The complex formula (developed by outside consultants – there’s $1.5 million in this budget for them) determines how much the state will invest in each student, factoring elements like the size of classes, teacher salaries, what goes into the educational ‘basket of goods’, and more. In recent years, that investment has rapidly risen. (Test scores haven’t - but that’s another story.)

If the massive investment in new schools is eating away funds that might go toward actual education services, as Massie suggested, and if the “stand-alone” phases of school construction in fact suggest much bigger obligations down the road, there may be trouble ahead.

The exhausted senators, working late into the night, didn’t have much to say about this assessment. Maybe they’re hoping, as in so many other areas, that in year or two the boom will be back, and all will be taken care of.

Hoping the boom will return and bail us out: That appears to be the attitude of several legislators who want to delay a contribution by state employees to their own retirement.

The Joint Appropriations Committee notes that the state retirement system needs a bit more revenue to keep up with retiree payments – nobody argues with that – and the JAC wants to up the amount of income contributed by state employees by 1.43 percent of whatever they earn. My creaky math suggests that a lower-end employee earning $35,000 a year would pay about $500 a year toward his or her retirement.

That would be a new experience for recent state employees – though employees and the state are supposed to split the current 11 percent contribution 50-50, the state has generously been picking up the whole tab in recent years.

Sen. Kathryn Sessions (D-Cheyenne) and some other solons want the state to kick in its extra bit (also1.43 percent) but leave the employees alone for now. “Give them one year to get their budget adjusted,” she told the Senate today.

(I happen to be technically a state employee – sorry, my wage is none of your business – but I’ve stayed outside the state retirement system. I have to say, though, that never in my entire life have I had a year’s budget mapped out to the last $500.)

On second reading of the budget, the Senate refused to let employees off the hook for that 1.43 percent. But it’s not over.

The easiest way to mock or demonize the cause of those who lobby for the liberty to obtain, carry, conceal and use firearms of all sorts is to describe their most vocal and insistent members. Perhaps it’s fairer to mention first the more reasonable people in this movement. Tom Zachary spoke to the House Judiciary Committee with humor and reason, joking that people who feel a need to take a firearm to church have probably attended a few Southern Baptist business meetings, noting that violent events like the shootings at Fort Hood are unavoidable “with somebody who’s nuts”, but still asserting broad 2nd amendment rights. And it should be recognized too that law enforcement officials see some value in a rancher with a gun in his pickup when a solo sheriff dealing with trouble in a remote, rural area needs some backup.

But for every reasonable advocate, there’s the heavyset, perspiring young man telling a legislative committee he has been carrying concealed unregistered weapons into church and movie theaters for years. How about state capitols? You have to mention such folks, because these are the guys who want these unfettered gun rights most passionately. They’re well-versed in their arguments, unyielding, and…creepy.

Behind this motley crew is a nationwide battalion of gun advocates who think it’s effective to deluge a Wyoming legislator with hundreds of duplicated emails. Rep. Rodney “Pete” Anderson (R-Pine Bluffs) told the Wyoming House that he was positively disposed toward a bill to allow individuals to carry concealed firearms without a permit (House Bill 113) until his mailbox overflowed with messages from just about everywhere in the country but his home district.

But don’t think legislators aren’t intimidated by the onslaught. Guns are a political litmus test issue like abortion – every comment, pro or con, begins with, “I’m a hunter and a gun-owner and I believe in the 2nd amendment…” (Jeez, even a journalist better give his bona fides – yeah, I’ve got guns at home, and I hunt…)

Legislators who are more than a little uncomfortable in a cramped hearing room with a guy they’ve never met before telling them his right to carry concealed overrides any state permit law, will turn around and vote for the bill that would make permits unnecessary – despite the public safety concerns of law enforcement and their own better sense. It’s apparent they’re more scared of the political ramifications than the guy standing in front of them. I doubt that many of them believe the right to carry concealed without a permit is one of those essential “freedoms” stolen by that evil federal government.

Rep. John Patton (R-Sheridan) was bold enough to question whether eliminating conceal-carry permits in Wyoming was a benefit to the general public, which he said should also enjoy “freedom from fear.” But only Rep. Joe Barbuto (D-Rock Springs) joined him in voting against the bill in committee.
Nor is it likely that the full House will shoot down the bill. Last year’s controversial “castle” gun bill, protecting those who did some shooting in defense of their homes, made it through the House and died when it came over to the Senate. Get ready, senators: Your email mail box is about to get shot up.

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the legislature is blowing: on the issue of wind, they’re taking charge, with proposals to tax, regulate, and strip wind power transmission lines of their right to blow over property owners. But expect a little push-back from industry lobbyists.

Rep. Kermit Brown (R-Laramie) described to the House Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee his first view of coal-bed methane development from the air. The wells, once drilling rigs were finished, were relatively modest protuberances of pipe; but with those wells spaced at five acres, there was a spider web of power lines and roads connecting them.

The same problems is foreseen with the “collector” powerlines that bring the juice from wind turbines to substations. Wind power doesn’t come from a single source, like a big coal-fired plan with a single set of massive transmission lines emerging. And under current law, energy companies can condemn private land to run those collector lines.

So Brown is pushing House Bill 79 to put a moratorium on the wind producers right of eminent domain for a year. (Ironically, power companies have no right of eminent domain when it comes to siting a wind farm – but they can condemn the paths of their power lines.)

And the lobbyists are out in force, says Gov. Dave Freudenthal, saying “life in Wyoming is going to end, and western civilization will end, and the world will collapse.”

Well, not exactly. Rather, they were telling Brown and the committee to watch their language – in the bill that is – so that they don’t accidentally lump transmission lines in with collector lines – because Wyoming seriously needs those big transmission lines, and more of them, to get its abundant energy to markets. Larry Wolfe, who represents Duke Energy, one of the largest wind developers working in Wyoming, says regulation is tolerable, but you have to get the wording right.

Brown admits that in the rush to protect landowners, the bills “may get a little muddled” and said he’d take all the help he could get. But the committee moved quickly to slow down eminent domain by passing the bill to the full House. Said Chairman Tom Lockhart (R-Casper): “Slow down, time out.”

No time out in the House, however, on the taxing of wind: a bill is moving forward that would charge wind producers $1 per megawatt-hour beginning in 2012 (for producers who have been producing for three years).

Wind farms provide tax revenues in the early stages, but once they’re up and running, there’s no severance tax or other method of extracting some bounty for either the state or local governments. Lobbyists like Wolfe see some sort of wind energy contribution to the local coffers as inevitable, but they want the legislature to take some time to study it, and look at other methods besides an excise tax.

The House keeps pressing forward, but the lobbyists seem to have more clout in the Senate Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee. Expect the tiny committee room to be stuffed to the rafters with pin-stripes when the House bill comes over – they’ll have to open a window and let in a breeze. (That’ll be $1, please…)