Midnight in the halls of Iron Range power

I didn’t think Excelsior Energy could go a whole legislative session without deploying its vast lobbying force for something. Recently, in the tax bill conference committee, State. Sen. Tom Bakk inserted language that extends the property tax exemptions from 2010 to 2012 for everyone’s favorite black hole of government giveaways and special favors. Excelsior is the company proposing the Mesaba Energy Project, a coal gas power plant intended for the Iron Range. The project enjoys great political support from most elected officials, is deeply misunderstood by the population at large, and will almost certainly break the hearts of the people of the Iron Range at some point in the next decade.

I’m tired of talking about carbon sequestration, private financing, lobbyists and lawyers and all the other things I rail about when I post about Excelsior. Let me try to explain why I care about this.

The first problem I have with this project is that it exists only because, starting in 2002, a group of lobbyist/lawyers succeeded in getting officials in Minnesota (and the Iron Range in particular) to give them vast amounts of money and favors. There was little debate, very little questioning of this so-called company. There was certainly no discussion about whether the tens of millions of state and Iron Range dollars and hundreds of millions of federal dollars could be better spent in other ways. We were told this was simply a “jobs” project, and that’s all Range lawmakers needed to hear in 2002 when it looked like the whole mining industry was falling apart. We were told 1,000 jobs would come from this, when anyone in the power industry could have told them that only about 100-200 permanent jobs could ever come from such a project. In short, the project was built on desperation and deception.

My second problem with this is related to a much larger issue. Who is in charge on the Iron Range? Are the people and their elected representatives in charge? Or is it developers, lobbyists and consultants? Because the Range is doomed if it’s the latter. We will only survive this fast-changing transition to the global economy if our elected leaders use judgment in defending the interests and resources of the people ahead of the interests of those who offer lofty promises in exchange for free rein over laws and public coffers. The leaders of Excelsior Energy walked onto the Iron Range pretending to be a group of native Rangers interested in “saving” the region. But their business model has been to clearly and forcibly shift risk from their ledgers onto that of the taxpayers, to promise more jobs than they could deliver and to mischaracterize the nature of the technology they tout, making a science experiment seem like a sure thing.

Meantime, the $9.5 million that the Iron Range gave this company (ostensibly as a loan, but the language clearly implies that we’ll never see that money again) could have built a new school. It could have almost met the state match on the federal highway money that could have finally — after FIFTY years — finished the cross-Range Highway 169. City sewers. Rural broadband. Streets and roads. All of these real needs were put behind the needs of lobbyists.

Excelsior Energy has acted as though it owns the Iron Range and is entitled to its mineral monies and special treatment. As long as the status quo continues, Excelsior and any half-rate pack of wolves that comes along DOES own the Range. They WILL extract our resources and push our local, county and state officials around like cattle. Every midnight conference committee will contain favorable language for developers at the expense of the regular Iron Range people who mined the ore that funded the whole enterprise. And when the money’s gone, the wolves will be gone. No jobs. And people like me and my kids will be sitting around wondering what to do next.

So I will talk about this as often as is necessary. I will post commentaries like this every week, every day if necessary until this company and any like it is driven from the halls of Iron Range power. I don’t need votes. I don’t need money. I’ve got no personal stake in this except that I want to see the right thing done and the people put first.

So if I go on and on, now you know why. Believe me, I’d MUCH rather be talking about something else.

Comments

  1. Wow! Oh that’s damn good! A sucker punch to the belly, then an upper cut to the left, a jab to the right.

    Atta boy Aaron!! And DON’T STOP!

Speak Your Mind

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.