Author Archives: admin

Represent the people —George Rhynes on the radio 2012-03-10

After praising Valdosta City Councilman Yost for standing up for the people in his district, even though George sometimes doesn’t agree with his positions, George Rhynes said:
It is indeed time that we begin to put people on these governing bodies who gonna represent the best interests of the people. I don’t care whether you’re black or white, Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic. But it is time now for us to stop just putting someone on the council because they look like us. We need to put people on the Council and the County Commissioners who’s going to stand up as the founding fathers of our Republic. And I mean the founding fathers of those who put themselves in the civil rights struggle on the front lines to do what is right.
Then he said Valdosta City Councilman James Wright would be on George’s radio program, and he invited all the rest of them to appear on his show, Magic 95, 950 AM.

There’s much more in his show. Here’s the video:

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GA HB 818 would reduce renewable energy tax credits

Snuck into a renewable energy bill is a proposed decrease to Georgia renewable energy tax credits. It already passed the House and needs to be fixed in the Senate.

In HB 818 Section 2.3:

(G) For calendar year 2014, $5 2.5 million.”
The Georgia House passed this bill unanimously, apparently paying attention only to the addition of geothermal and not noticing this item at the end. It is in the Senate Finance Committee.

Sen. Tim Golden is a member. Less than a year ago he assisted in passing these very same renewable energy GEFA tax credits and the next day in Valdosta at the ribbon cutting for the Wiregrass Solar project he said:

…solar power at one time was a theory, and now it’s in practice.
He and other Georgia State Senators need to know somebody in the statehouse is trying to stop that solar practice.

Capitol Office

121-G State Capitol
Atlanta, GA 30334
Phone: (404) 656-7580
Fax: (404) 651-6767 		    tim.golden@senate.ga.gov

District Information

110 Beacon Hill
Valdosta, GA 31602
Fax: (229) 241-7732
Why decrease? The current GEFA renewable energy tax credits are already almost entirely subscribed through 2014. Why not increase them?

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PS: Owed to Claudia Collier.

PPS: Current law: Continue reading →

Farm Bill Forum Friday in Tifton with Sen. Saxby Chambliss

Two farm bill forums Friday: one in Jesup at 9AM, and one in Tifton at 2PM, both hosted by Senator Saxby Chambliss. GA Ag. Commissioner Gary Black will be at the one in Tifton. Might be a good place to mention you want the farm bill to reauthorize USDA Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) grants.

Press Release, 8 March 2012, Chambliss to Host 2012 Farm Bill Forum,

Events will be held March 16th in Jesup and Tifton

On Friday, March 16th, Sen. Chambliss will hold two forums to discuss the upcoming 2012 Farm Bill. The public is invited to attend.

Friday, March 16th, 2012
at 9 am

Altamaha Technical College
C. Paul Scott Polytechnical Center
1777 West Cherry Street
Jesup, GA 31545
Participants will include:
Zippy Duvall, Georgia Farm Bureau
Charles Hall, Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association
Robert Redding, Southern Peanut Farmers Federation
John Maguire , National Cotton Council

Friday, March 16th
at 2 pm

UGA Tifton Campus Conference Center
15 RDC Road
Tifton, GA 31793
Participants will include:
Gary Black, Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture
Charles Hall, Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association
Robert Redding, Southern Peanut Farmers Federation
John Maguire , National Cotton Council
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Separate CWIP payments to Georgia Power —WACE call for action

We don’t have to wait for the Georgia legislature to ban Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) for Georgia Power’s new nukes at Plant Vogtle. WACE has put out a clever call for action about CWIP, Go Solar, Not Nuclear!

Here’s an excerpt:

  • Use two checks each time you pay your bill. One check covers the amount you are forced to pay for “Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery” (write “for solar construction” in the memo line). The other check covers the remaining amount of your actual electricity costs.
  • Include a note in the letter with your checks voicing your opposition to nuclear power and ask Georgia Power to invest your funds in solar energy instead. This note could read:
    • I oppose nuclear power because of its dangers to our health and our environment. (See the nuclear accidents at Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island)
    • I oppose the construction surcharge for nuclear power plants because they are too expensive and waste billions of our tax dollars. (Plant Vogtle was originally estimated to cost $660 million. Eventually, only 2 of its proposed 4 reactors were built, costing more than $8 billion, and resulting in huge rate hikes for Georgia residents.)
    • I ask that GA Power invest my money and any collected surcharges in solar instead.
The PDF of the call includes these addresses:
Tim Echols, Chairman
Georgia Public Service Commission
244 Washington Street SW
Atlanta, GA 30334
1-800-282-5813 		W. Paul Bowers, CEO
Georgia Power Company
241 Ralph McGill Boulevard NE
Atlanta, GA 30308
1-888-660-5890
And don’t forget Georgia Power’s parent company The Southern Company’s CEO, Thomas Fanning, said a year ago he’s “bullish” on solar. Let’s see some solar action from The Southern Company and Georgia Power!

Here are some more contacts.

You don’t even have to be a Georgia Power customer to write to these people. Most of them are elected or appointed officials who are supposed to represent you, the taxpayers.

-jsq

CCA private prison project shelved —VDT

According to this morning’s paper VDT, the contract between private prison company CCA and the Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority has expired. The land owner could sell the land to CCA anyway, but that would be without a state or federal customer for the prison and without $5 or $6 million in economic incentives VLCIA was going to arrange, including without water and sewer.

According to the letter Brad Lofton signed and VLCIA sent to CCA 12 November 2009, the total of incentives was more like $9 million dollars of tax abatements for CCA or tax-funded work, all of which the rest of us taxpayers would have to pay for one way or another. All that plus the prison itself would have been paid for with our tax dollars. Tax dollars that now can go to rehabilitation or education instead.

So the people of the community win! Congratulations to Drive Away CCA and all others who helped oppose this private prison project, and congratulations to the Industrial Authority for finally saying what is going on.

Perhaps now the Industrial Authority can get on with bringing in industry that will actually contribute to the community. How about industry that people would be proud to move next to? Industry that would employ local people? Industry that would attract knowledge-based workers and businesses? Maybe that’s what VLCIA’s Strategic Plan Process is about. If so, let’s all help the Industrial Authority achieve it.

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Land bank SB 284: multiple counties and eminent domain —Barbara Stratton

Received 5 March 2012 on Keep an eye on the Land Bank Authority. -jsq
There is no direct reference to a regional land bank authority. However, the bill [GA SB 284 -jsq] allows for “Intergovernmental contract” defined as “a contract as authorized pursuant to Article IX, Section III, Paragraph I of the Constitution of GA and paragraph (5) of Code Section 36-34-2 and entered into by counties, consolidated governments, and municipal corporations pursuant to this article.” Section 48-4-103 further lists that a land bank may be created by two or more counties, which spells regional to me. Therefore regional land bank authorities can be established if this bill is passed.

The bill also allows for public/private partnerships which co-mingle government and private enterprise. Under Section 48-4-106 which enumerates the powers of a land bank, Lines 307 – 315 state

Continue reading →

Why CWIP is a bad idea

Iowa is rejecting CWIP, and Georgia can, too. Here’s why.

Herman K. Trabish wrote for Green Tech Media 22 February 2012, The Nuclear Industry’s Answer to Its Marketplace Woes: Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) financing shifts the risks of nuclear energy to utility ratepayers,

A sign of the nuclear industry’s difficult situation in the aftermath of Fukushima is a proposal before the Iowa legislature
“Construction Work in Progress was intended to circumvent the core consumer protection of the regulatory decision-making process,”
that would allow utility MidAmerican Energy Holdings, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, to build a new nuclear facility in the state using Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) financing (also called advanced cost recovery).

“Investment in nuclear power is the antithesis of the kind of investments you would want to make under the current uncertain conditions,” explained nuclear industry authority Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment. “They cannot raise the capital to build these plants in normal markets under the normal regulatory structures.”

CWIP would allow the utility to raise the money necessary to build a nuclear power plant by billing ratepayers in advance of and during construction.

“Construction Work in Progress was intended to circumvent the core consumer protection of the regulatory decision-making process,” Cooper explained. “It exposes ratepayers to all the risk.” The nuclear industry’s answer to its post-Fukushima challenges, he said, “is to simply rip out the heart of consumer protection and turn the logic of capital markets on their head.”

And the Iowa Utilities Board staff agreed with Cooper and recommended against CWIP.
His message to policymakers is simple, Cooper said. “This is an investment you would not make with your own money. Therefore, you should not make it with the ratepayers’ money.”
Meanwhile, in Georgia: Continue reading →

Private prison is like biomass —Ashley Paulk

A deep silence came from the Industrial Authority yesterday, but GDOC board member Ashley Paulk compared the private prison to the biomass project.

I asked Lowndes County Commission Chair and Georgia Department of Corrections (GDOC) board member Ashley Paulk if he had heard whether the private prison contract had been extended past yesterday’s deadline. He had not. However, he did volunteer that he had asked the GDOC board whether they had had any discussion about such a prison and they had not. Further, GDOC just last year approved a CCA prison in Jenkins County, Georgia, so why would another one be built here? Prison populations are decreasing in Georgia, Paulk said. He even said, “It’s like the biomass situation,” in that there’s no business model. It was Ashley Paulk who signaled the end of the biomass project. And he already signaled the end of the private prison project on the front page of the VDT and he told Eames Yates of WCTV 29 Feb 2012,

Until you have a customer, you won’t see a prison, and they don’t have a customer.
He said several times yesterday he did not expect the private prison to be built. And he went beyond what he had said before in explicitly likening the private prison project to the biomass project.

After last Thursday’s Valdosta City Council meeting, two different Valdosta City Council members and Mayor John Gayle all told me they had talked to various people and they didn’t expect CCA’s private prison to be built.

I hope they’re all correct about that.

But we all still wait for the Industrial Authority to tell us. They’re missing a huge potential positive PR opportunity by not holding a big press conference and taking credit for ending the private prison. They still could do that this morning.

Or they could keep claiming that community activism has no effect, even though it is activism that got both of those projects in the news and got people like Ashley Paulk to speak out. Maybe the Industrial Authority likes people to laugh at them. Me, I’d prefer an Industrial Authority that stood up for the people of this community.

-jsq

VLCIA executive session on real estate transactions last Thursday noon

According to the VLCIA website, they had a special called meeting last Thursday, including apparently an executive session to discuss real estate transactions. One big real estate transaction with a deadline of today (13 March 2012) is the CCA private prison.

This is on the front page of the VLCIA website:

Notice:The Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority will hold a Special Called Meeting on Thursday, March 8, 2012 at noon, for the purpose of reviewing bids and awarding a contract for the Miller Business Park Landscape/Irrigation Project and discuss real estate transactions.
Here’s the agenda. I congratulate the Industrial Authority for posting agendas!

Note the executive session. The agenda doesn’t say what the executive session is for (isn’t it supposed to, according to Georgia sunshine laws?). We can guess it’s for real estate transactions, as in the notice on the VLCIA front page.

Hm, what real estate transactions could that be? A contract for a landscaping and irrigation project isn’t a real estate transaction. Let me think… oh, the CCA private prison is a real estate transaction! Could that be what they were discussing?

The rest of VLCIA’s website is pretty thoroughly broken right now, as in

Warning: Parameter 3 to showItem() expected to be a reference, value given in /home/industri/public_html/includes/Cache/Lite/Function.php on line 100
None of the other links seem to work.

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Special Called Meeting of the
Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Thursday, March 8, 2012, 12 noon
Valdosta Lowndes County Industrial Authority
Conference Room
Valdosta, Georgia
  • Call to Order Special Called Meeting

  • Invocation

  • Welcome Guests

  • Westside Business Park

    • Reviewing bids and awarding a contract for the Miller Business Park Landscape and Irrigation Project
  • Adjourn Special Called Meeting into Executive Session
  • Adjourn Executive Session/Call to Order Special Called Meeting
  • Adjourn Special Called Meeting

How to ban CWIP in Georgia

A one-paragraph law can do it; that’s all it took in New Hampshire to ban Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) after Three Mile Island. OK, plus a state Supreme Court ruling, but that would be easier in Georgia since the New Hampshire Supreme Court already set a precedent of upholding the NH law. After Fukushima, Georgia could ban CWIP and end the new Plant Vogtle construction. The we could get on with building solar.

Here’s the text of the NH law, taken from the NH Supreme Court ruling:

“378:30-a Public Utility Rate Base; Exclusions. Public utility rates or charges shall not in any manner be based on the cost of construction work in progress. At no time shall any rates or charges be based upon any costs associated with construction work if said construction work is not completed. All costs of construction work in progress, including, but not limited to, any costs associated with constructing, owning, maintaining or financing construction work in progress, shall not be included in a utility’s rate base nor be allowed as an expense for rate making purposes until, and not before, said construction project is actually providing service to consumers.”
Simple enough. The Georgia legislature could do it. Knowing the NH CWIP ban caused PSNH to go bankrupt on costs for the Seabrook nuclear plant, Georgia Power might back off on Plant Vogtle rather than have such a law passed.

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