Child care and the state

Wyoming people want basic regulation of child care

State oversight of home child care providers protects children, more than a dozen child care providers and the people who need their services told the House Labor Health and Social Services Committee hearing Wednesday evening.

The witnesses, including child care providers from Cheyenne, Douglas, and Powell, opposed a proposed bill that would have exempted some home child care providers from state certification.

The legislation, House Bill 239 – Child caring facilities-certification, exempted home child care operations from state certification requirements if they do not accept any state subsidies for providing the care. Sponsor Rep. Lorraine Quarberg (R-HD28, Thermpolis) said she introduced the measure after a Big Horn basin family violated state law that says home care providers can not care for more than two unrelated children unless their business is certified by the state.

Quarberg said there are trustworthy people who can provide such care without certification by the state.

But advocates of child care regulation said the state certification and licensing processes assure parents that at least minimal safety rules would be met. Opponents argued that providers who choose to operate unlicensed would not have central registry background checks or criminal history background checks.

Those background checks are performed by the state Department of Family Services. Several witnesses at the hearing noted that most parents do not have access to the tools needed to check the background of a potential care giver for their children. Mike McGrady, a Cheyenne attorney, said he had access to investigatory tools as he considered child care providers. “But I didn’t know what questions to ask,” he said. Home care providers are “still a business,” he said, and it makes sense to require them to meet basic standards.

Committee member Rep. Frank Peasley (R-HD3, Douglas) asked several opponents if there is any statistical proof that regulation has reduced problems surrounding child care.

“Did abuse go down?” he asked. It seems, he said, that “the more we regulate, the more problems we have.”

He noted his wife put him through school by “baby sitting” and she did so before the state licensed care.

When Cheyenne police detective Joe Hickerson said background checks would keep people clearly unsuited because of a record of violence against children out of the child care business, Rep. Peasley asked him, “Do you want the state more involved in parenting?”

“Common sense would tell you,” Hickerson replied, that basic background checks will protect children.

“If people have a loophole to go through,” Hickerson told Peasley, “… they will take advantage of that.”

Other providers noted the ease of going through the full licensing process in Wyoming. Licensing, one noted, is a breeze compared to the challenges and difficulties of caring for children.

In her closing comments, HB 239 sponsor Quarberg said she was pleased to hear that licensing is not difficult for people who want to operate a child care business. She said people should be more trusting of neighbors who want to offer care to children.

“We can do background checks, but we can’t check for violent tendencies,” she said. Once regulations are adopted, she said, “It is difficult to go backwards. It’s difficult to say we’re not all monsters.”

The committee voted to kill the bill 3-6.

Nay votes were cast by Reps. Joe Barbuto (D-HD48, Rock Springs), Rep. Bernadine Craft (D-HD17, Rock Springs), Gerald Gay (R-HD36, Casper), Keith Gingery (R-HD23, Jackson), Matt Greene (R-HD45, Laramie), and Hans Hunt (R-HD2, Newcastle).

Chairman Elaine Harvey (R-HD26, Lovell) joined Reps. David Miller (R-HD55, Riverton) and Peasley in voting YES for the bill.

Taxing the wind power industry

Taxing the wind power industry to assure that the industry pays it way and that counties have the resources needed to deal with the impacts of wind farm industrialization was considered by the House Revenue Committee Wednesday morning and again in the afternoon.

Rep. Tim Stubson (R-HD56, Casper) and Sen. Drew Perkins (R-SD29, Casper) offered a taxing scheme that would permanently exempt wind projects from the sales tax but impose a $3 per mega-watt-hour tax on power generated by wind turbines. As they presented HB 191 – Wind power taxation, the sponsors suggested a major amendment substantially changing the scheme to finance an impact fund as it generates revenues for the state and counties. Their plan , they said, eliminates potential state sales tax revenues now but ultimately generates greater revenues to the state.

That prospect provided little solace for Carbon County Commissioners Terry Weikum and Jerry Paxton. They said the county’s quality of life has been harmed by wind projects there that have been built recently under state laws that exempt those projects from the sales tax. Without the tax, the county does not have the resources needed to deal with damages to roads, demands for more law enforcement, and increased drug problems in rural communities like Medicine Bow, according to Paxton and Weikum.

The commissioners said existing law, which will lift the sales tax exemption on wind farm construction Jan. 1, 2012 and impose a $1 per mwh power generation tax, would provide resources to deal with the expected impacts of projects now on the drawing boards. The projects would be subject to local-option sales taxes. They worry that the Stubson-Perkins proposal may not leave them in as good a position to deal with new wind power construction projects.

The ESPC noted that other energy industries pay property, sales and severance taxes. The wind power industry should pay property, sales and MWH taxes.

The vote:

The committee approved HB191, as amended with regard to distribution of the tax revenues.
Ayes: Chairman Pat Childers (R-H50, Cody); Representatives Greg Blikre (R-H53, Gillette), Patrick Goggles (D-H33, Ethete), Owen Petersen (R-H19, Mountain View), Clarence Vranish (R-H49, Evanston).
Noes: Representatives Rita Campbell (R-H34, Shoshoni), David Miller (R-H55, Riverton), Mark Semlek (R-H1, Moorcroft)
Excused: Rep. Mike Madden (R-H40, Buffalo)

Elsewhere Wednesday

The House Labor Committee also approved a bill that advocates contend will require the Workers’ Compensation Division to use a guide to rating physical impairments that is more fair to injured workers than the guide now used by the division. (House Bill 232 – Workers’ Compensation impairment ratings)

In Committee of the Whole, the House killed HB131 – Tip sharing. Opponents said the bill unfairly required employees to surrender tips to a pool that then could be used by employers to meet the legal requirement to bring other tipped employees up to the federally required minimum wage of $7.25 hour from the tipped minimum wage of $2.13/hr.

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House panel softens wind tax

Revenue Committee cuts tax rate

The House Revenue Committee Monday morning backed a bill that will impose a tax on power generated by wind turbines, but not before softening its impact by amending it to delay implementation and to reduce the tax rate substantially.

House Bill 101 Electricity generated from wind-taxation would levy an excise tax "upon the privilege of producing electricity from wind resources" in Wyoming. Gov. Dave Freudenthal called for legislators to support the tax in his State of the State speech last week.

The ESPC supports the idea, and told the committee that the state must tax renewable energy sources in order to sustain its tax base now and into the future.

Advocates for county governments said the tax is needed to produce the revenues necessary to maintain the roads and other basic services the wind-energy companies need. Still, Joe Evans of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association said, "We don't know what the correct rate of taxation should be."

Natrona County Commission Chairman Rob Hendry said Natrona County needs revenues to maintain roads, then quickly announced that as a contractor, he hopes to do business with the companies building wind farms.

Industry advocates lobbed rocks at the idea. A representative of Wasatch Wind, a wind power developer with offices in Canada and Utah, described the proposed rate of taxation of $3 per megawatt hour as "onerous."

Matt Grant, Rocky Mountain Power's lobbyist, said that the taxes will be passed on to customers. Since minerals producers are the company's largest customers in Wyoming, he said, "This tax will be paid by the minerals industry."

House Revenue Committee Chairman Rodney Pete Anderson, R-HD10, (pictured above) proposed an amendment to delay the implementation to 2012, rather than 2011 as the bill originally required. He also proposed reducing the rate of taxation to $1 per megawatt hour. Both those amendments passed.

The bill's fiscal note indicated the tax would generate about $14.8 million in both fiscal 2012 and 2013. But that estimate was based on the $3 rate. It's unclear how much the $1 rate will generate. Anderson said his amendment will postpone imposing the tax for the first three years a generator is in service.

An amendment to send all the revenues from the tax to the counties where wind power is generated was defeated. The bill proposes splitting the revenues, with 60% going to the state and 40% going to the counties where the power is produced.

Grant and other industry lobbyists like Dan Sullivan and Larry Wolfe argued for more thorough study. Wolfe opposed the tax. Sullivan suggested that state probably will develop a power generation tax “of some kind.” Wolfe said the tax would be the first power generation tax in the West, a point later disputed by Chairman Anderson.

Wolfe also said one of his wind-power clients, Duke Energy, has signed such tight contracts with Rocky Mountain Power to buy its electricity that it will not be able to pass-through tax increases as Rocky Mountain can.

When the committee considered the amendment to cut the tax rate from $3 per megawatt hour to $1, Rep Sue Wallis, R-HD52, Recluse, proposed cutting the rate to just 5 cents per megawatt hour. Her amendment failed, garnering support only from Rep. Mark Semlek, R-HD1, Moorcroft, and Rep. Amy Edmonds, R-HD12, Cheyenne.

The bill ultimately won approval from the committee on a 6-3 vote with Edmonds, Semlek and Wallis voting no.

Here's the committee vote as listed by the LSO:

Ayes: Representative(s) Anderson, R., Esquibel, K., Goggles, Madden, Miller and Petersen

Nayes: Representative(s) Edmonds, Semlek and Wallis

2/15/2010 H Placed on General File

An eye on Blue Sky

Discussion of the wind generation tax ranged fairly widely, with the committee focusing attention on Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky Renewable Energy Program.

Rep. David Miller, R-HD55, Riverton, asked if any of the company’s wind-generated power is sole in Wyoming or if Wyoming customers are charged for it.

“No we are not,” RMP lobbyist Grant answered. He noted that once electricity enters the grid it is impossible to tell where or how any of the electrons were generated. The company simply gives customers the privilege to buy green power.

“How much of your green power is sold that way?” Chairman Anderson asked. “All of it or more than all of it?”

The company website notes that its customers can participate in the Blue Sky program “and help bring new renewable energy facilities on-line.” Once customers enroll in the program, RMP says it buys renewable energy credits from newly developed renewable energy facilities.

“Buying one 100-kwh block of Blue Sky each month for a year is as good for the environment as planting nearly 63 trees or not driving a car for 1,482 miles!”

The RMP web site lists this explanation of the calculation of environmental benefits:

"Rocky Mountain Power purchases the exclusive right to claim all of the environmental benefits from the generation of electricity produced by renewable energy power plants in the exact amount of Blue Sky purchases. The environmental benefits figures are based on the average non-base load generation emissions from the Western Energy Coordinating Council (WECC) region, as updated December 2008, and on data and calculations provided by the U .S. Environmental Protection Agency."