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Supervisors weigh modest budget tweaks and ideas for local utility/severance revenue
Summary
Supervisors proposed small changes to their departmental budget — more for publication of ordinances and less for mileage/meals — and discussed broader ideas heard at ISAC, including whether a local severance tax or franchise fees could capture revenue from wind, solar and fiber-optic infrastructure.
Speaker 5 reviewed the supervisors' proposed budget adjustments, suggesting a $2,000 increase to the publications/board-proceedings line to cover potential ordinance printing (for example, a solar ordinance) and offsetting that by reducing mileage/meals/lodging by a similar amount. "Printing those ordinances cost quite a bit of money...I thought we should probably up that by a couple of thousand," Speaker 5 said.
The meeting then turned to policy ideas Speaker 3 summarized from an ISAC session: local options such as a severance tax on production from wind, solar and gas developers, franchise fees for utilities using right-of-way, or other levies that could capture a share of utility-related revenues. Speaker 3 cautioned substantial research would be needed, including legal review of state code and how funds are distributed by the state. "I don't know if the code allows us to to have our own," Speaker 3 said, noting state distributions and exemptions complicate the picture.
Supervisors noted some existing state-collected utility tax dollars are returned to counties as part of state distributions and that any new local measure would require analysis; staff were tasked to gather information and consider next steps at the subsequent meeting.
