Let TransAlta continue to be an asset

February 26, 2009

Folks around here know TransAlta as three things: a supplier of reliable electric power; the largest private employer in the area; and an outstanding community neighbor.

Unfortunately those who are touting “green-collar” jobs as the future (or, depending on who’s talking, the economic salvation) of our state aren’t inclined to be friendly toward a place where people wearing blue and white collars turn coal into energy, even if they are doing so with modern technologies.

The result is a pair of bills that target the tax incentives which brought TransAlta to our area and have helped keep the coal plant economically viable for the past 12 years. As the sponsor of the legislation to offer those tax incentives in 1997, I am determined to keep them in place – and keep TransAlta, with the energy, jobs and charitable nature it provides.

Senate Bill 5766, introduced Jan. 30 and presently before the Senate Ways and Means Committee, would force the company to pay back the tax incentives earned since 1997. It’s essentially a retroactive penalty for some sort of perceived infraction.

Senate Bill 6029, which would eliminate future tax incentives not only for TransAlta but also other companies that produce energy from non-renewable resources, was introduced Feb. 16. It has progressed farther, receiving a public hearing before Ways and Means on Wednesday.

These bills have a common core of sponsors: Democrat senators in Vancouver, Tacoma and Seattle. They need to have a common fate: rejection.

It’s ironic that Senate Democrats list job creation as their top priority when either of these bills would be devastating for TransAlta and by extension for the 200 people it employs (not to mention those who through contract work benefit from a $52 million payroll). Do they really want to force those people to join the 300,000 Washingtonians already looking for work, and do they want Lewis County’s unemployment rate – at 13 percent the highest of any county west of the Cascades – to continue climbing?

Tax incentives are an excellent economic development tool, as TransAlta’s very presence in Lewis County proves. The incentives in the legislation I put forth a dozen years ago helped seal the deal for the coal plant’s purchase from PacifiCorp.

Given state government’s financial condition – you may have heard about the $8 billion gap between revenues and spending commitments – I don’t expect this Legislature to authorize many if any new tax incentives or exemptions. But what is the motivation for going after tax incentives that are in place and working? Especially when TransAlta has acted in good faith, doing what the Legislature required to earn the tax incentive by addressing the coal plant’s emissions? (The smokestack scrubbers and other changes the company made represented a $235 million investment, which was only partially offset by the incentive.)

Is this move about trying to find every dollar possible to fill the enormous, self-inflicted budget gap? Maybe. Some of the same sponsors of the anti-TransAlta legislation are working to repeal the sales tax credit on new purchases of certain hybrid cars, which could bring $50 million-plus into the state general fund. At least some of that would be used to continue a sales tax exemption for electric vehicle purchases, but still – the majority party apparently is so desperate for “green” dollars that it’s willing to go after buyers of certain “green” vehicles.

Throw in the bias toward “green” jobs and the coal plant becomes an obvious target. Makes me wish the sponsors of these job-killing bills would have been here during the 2007 flooding, to see TransAlta donating not only money but man-hours to help Lewis County residents in a time of need.

If our state values employers who are being environmentally responsible and good community members, SB 5766 and SB 6029 need to be put down. TransAlta needs – and deserves – to continue its important business without this sort of threat.  

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For more information contact
Ashley Forsyth
 (360) 786-7037