Ask your elected officials to include solar on their capital projects lists.
The Trump presidency will bring us no progress on climate. In fact, the administration is working overtime to resurrect coal and nuclear power through federal actions. This puts the burden on states, tribes and pueblos, cities and counties.
New Mexicans have a responsibility, at every level of government, to move forward while the federal government goes backward. To quickly summarize, the control of methane emissions is probably the one action New Mexico can take with the most global effect, and we are all out on our campaigns to clean up these emissions.
We are also addressing natural gas, transportation (described elsewhere here by Donna Griffin) and meat consumption (an ongoing topic at the national and state level). And, as we well know, we are still getting most of our electricity from coal, whether we get it from PNM, a muni, or a rural electric co-op. Legislation to increase the requirements of the Renewable Portfolio Standard will be a major focus of our work in the 2019 session, along with legislation to allow community solar (facilities that are owned by entities, rather than by a central utility).
One step that can be pursued immediately by Sierra Club members is to urge local governments and schools to ask for capital funding for solar installations and efficiency improvements. The theory is simple: every year the legislature provides millions of dollars in severance-tax funding for local and statewide projects, which range from large water projects to senior-citizen centers. County governments often respond to small communities that seek help with road paving or other local priorities. As counties and municipalities look at their energy bills, seeking state funding for solar is a way to offset the operational expenses associated with wastewater treatment, jails, fire stations and other county buildings. And it is a way for us, as citizens, to reduce our output of greenhouse gases.
This is a modest but effective path to real progress. If you want to help, talk to school officials, and elected city and county officials. They are preparing lists of capital projects, to be funded at either the local level, likely through general obligation bonds, or to be given to state legislators as part of the “wish list” for the next legislative session. Staffers can assist in providing estimates of the cost of solarizing specific buildings, which makes a request more appealing (“all politics is local.”) The other important step is to speak to local representatives, from both the state House and Senate, to explain why you’d like to see capital funding spent on clean energy. Solar installations are a new concept for some, but a perfectly legitimate outlay for capital funding. Of course, this is a political process and we must be respectful of the competing demands on legislators. The compelling point for solar and efficiency investments is that it reduces operating costs for schools and governments, which is in everyone’s interest. Don’t wait too long, because officials are already getting ready for the 2019 session.
There’s plenty of information about capital funding on the Legislative Finance Committee’s pages, for those who want to dig deeper. Our severance tax bonds are issued against revenue from oil and gas, and other mineral taxes. See this article.
You can get an idea of what was requested by counties in the past in this article.
The total severance-tax authorization for agencies was about $164 million in the last session. Schools, libraries, senior centers and other popular projects are funded by general obligation bonds (assessed through property taxes after approval by the voters) for a total of another $165 million [ link ].
Finally, the Legislature sometimes funds capital items through “nonrecurring revenues,” that is, revenues that were not projected as part of the prior year’s general fund revenues.
Perhaps this all seems complicated, but it really isn’t. The capital budgeting process is a very local process, from the gathering of requests from local governments to discussions with state legislators. As we seek to reduce greenhouse gases for the sake of our state and world, speeding up the transition to solar is a way that we can all help.
Denise Fort
Featured photo by Michael Mazengarb on Flickr.
You must be logged in to post a comment.