Preserving local control over wind development has been Gov. Deval Patrick’s mantra, but lawmakers from wind-rich parts of the state didn’t buy it. Outnumbered and outvoted, they managed to run out the clock on the bill last week and kill it, at least temporarily.
The House passed wind energy siting legislation, but several western and central Massachusetts lawmakers threw up a series of last-minute parliamentary roadblocks that delayed the bill’s arrival in the Senate until just after last Saturday’s midnight deadline. Those tactics prevented Patrick from accelerating wind energy development in Massachusetts and showed once again that the issue of local control remains a potent political force.
The proposed wind energy permitting reforms were designed to compress what has become a time-consuming, costly process for municipal officials, developers, and project opponents alike into a framework that aims to get onshore wind facilities approved in 18 months or less.
Patrick administration officials insist that they worked hard to craft a bill that respects municipal officials’ decision-making, provides one-stop local and state permitting for onshore wind projects, and curbs the types of appeals that stalled projects like Hoosac Wind in the northern Berkshires. (The Supreme Judicial Court recently gave the go-ahead for Hoosac Wind after six years of appeals.)
“It’s a compromise that respects home rule traditions, but gets at the problem that we are concerned with, people tying up the process with appeals,” Kenneth Kimmell, general counsel for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, told a Environmental Business Council of New England forum audience recently.
Not so, said Rep. Denis Guyer, a Dalton Democrat, who voted against the bill and helped seal the bill’s minutes-to-midnight demise in the House by introducing a request to reconsider the vote approving the bill.
“I think that [Secretary of Energy and the Environment] Ian Bowles and the wind industry and his legislative allies have done a very good job in making the issues around this bill about green vs. non-green energy, not about a loss of local control,” he said.
The wind siting reform legislation called for new statewide standards for siting wind energy projects. Developers building a facility of two megawatts or more who comply with the standards would be entitled to an expedited permitting process requiring just two approvals – one from a new local wind energy permitting board and the other from the state Energy Facilities Siting Board. The state board would only review proposals approved by local boards. It could not overrule the local decisions but would be allowed to impose more stringent conditions on a project.
Developers whose projects are rejected at the local level, or who disagree with the conditions local officials impose, could appeal through the courts. Projects given the green light at the local and state level over the objections of opponents could only be challenged with a single appeal to the SJC.
Rep. Barry Finegold, the co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy, says the bill maintains local control. “Basically, the communities have the last word about whether a wind facility can be built there,” he said. “If a board that gets appointed says no [to a project], it’s no,” he said. “All this does is it cuts down the bureaucracy and the red tape.”
Yet opponents of the bill argue the proposed appeals process for siting wind farms could erode local control. With state officials pushing for 2000 megawatts of wind power by 2020 to meet Bay State renewable energy goals, opponents fear that the state board would be inclined to play down objections from local parties. They also worry that a 120-day review process for municipalities would be too short, with some projects getting the green light simply because communities, especially rural ones that rely on volunteer boards or have to hire consultants, can’t move quickly enough.
“To have complex wind energy facilities be subject to fast-track permitting is going to be extremely difficult for our towns,” said Peggy Sloan, Franklin Regional Council of Government’s director of planning and development. Guyer agreed. “This process is stacked against smaller towns,” he said.
The 95-51 vote in the House broke down along predictable lines, with representatives from wind-rich onshore areas like western Massachusetts and offshore areas like the South Coast, Cape Cod and the Islands generally opposing the bill (Offshore wind farms, however, fall under a different statute.) All the Berkshire, Franklin, and Hampshire county state representatives voted no. More House lawmakers opposed the wind bill (51) than the gambling bill (36), which is currently in limbo after the governor sent the bill back to the Legislature with an amendment removing slot machines.
(The Senate passed its earlier version of the legislation on a voice vote in February.)
Patrick administration officials “remain confident that this bill will become law in due course,” according to Robert Keough, the spokesman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
“Due course” could end up being next year with a new Legislature unless the Senate passes the bill during informal sessions. But as last Saturday’s events show, nothing motivates lawmakers like legislation that they believe threatens local control. Going that route would take some more creative parliamentary maneuvering. A single objection during an informal session stops a bill dead in its tracks.
