dusher's blog
John McClaughry and Paul Cillo Debate Vermont's Budget Deficit
I recommend this Seven Days ( January 13-20, 2010) article by Ken Picard. With good questions and salient responses, it's well worth your time to understand the issues that form the debate in Montpelier this session as the Legislature wrestles to close the $150 Million deficit for FY 2011.
It's clear that Cillo (Public Assets Institute) advocates raising taxes as well as cutting expenses while McClaughry (Ethan Allen Institute) believes it's high time for a structural overhaul of what government actually does and the services it provides.
The link to the interview: http://www.7dvt.com/2010sizing-vermont
Financial Impact of Closing Vermont Yankee
Closing Vermont Yankee is a very bad idea. For the Legislature to do so on emotional or ideological grounds is the epitomy of irrational public ploicy.
Willem Post, an engineer with the time and talent to examine the economics of closing Vermont Yankee, offers a rational economic analysis for relicensing Vermont's cleanest and least espensive source of baseload electricity. The "top line" reality for closing VY and replacing it with other 'renewable' sources in Vermont would be very costly to Vermont electric ratepayers. He summarizes:
Vermont Leaders Approve Plan to Save $Millions - Will Plan Succeed?
While the news is good that Governor Douglas and Legislative leaders have agreed to accept "Challenges for Change," we doubt that all the estimated savings will be realized in FY2011. We want to know who will be responsible for tracking the progress and quantifying these savings. State government has only a few months to implement these recomendations in order to allow time for them to be in place long enough to realize the assumed savings.The devil is always in the details.
This is the report from the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce:
"The big news this week aside from Governor Douglas’State of the State address was an announcement by Governor Douglas, Speaker Shap Smith, and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin that they had agreed on a plan to save more than $38 million.
Germany's Alternative Energy Experience - A Lesson for Vermont
The German experience
Final report – October 2009
Project team: Dr. Manuel Frondel,
Nolan Ritter, Prof. Colin Vance, Ph.D. (Project management)
Abstract
"The allure of an environmentally benign, abundant, and cost-effective energy
source has led an increasing number of industrialized countries to back public
financing of renewable energies. Germany’s experience with renewable energy
promotion is often cited as a model to be replicated elsewhere, being based on a
combination of far-reaching energy and environmental laws that stretch back nearly
two decades. This paper critically reviews the current centerpiece of this effort, the
Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), focusing on its costs and the associated implications
for job creation and climate protection. We argue that German renewable
energy policy, and in particular the adopted feed-in tariff scheme, has failed to
harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into the country’s energy portfolio. To the contrary, the government’s support mechanisms have in many respects subverted these incentives, resulting in massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security.
In the case of photovoltaics, Germany’s subsidization regime has reached a level
that by far exceeds average wages, with per-worker subsidies as high as 175,000 €
(US $ 240,000)"
VEH's Licata Speaks to House Ways and Means Committee
VEH'sTom Licata, along with three other folks, spoke to the House Ways and Means Committee on January 6, 2010 to provide a framework for the future and context for the difficult decisions confronting this Legislature. Tom had a decent mix of local VT charts and national/international information about debt, deficits and the structural chages in the U.S. and the world's economy.
The National Reality
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the (federal) government what they want - and their kids pay for it." Richard Lamm