Utah Gov. Spencer Cox should veto the recently passed SB161, a bill that would risk millions, if not billions, in taxpayer money to preserve a coal-fired power plant we would all be better off without.
The bill passed by relatively narrow margins in both the House and the Senate, so a veto at least stands a chance of being sustained.
The bill, which carries the Orwellian title “Energy Security Amendments,” orders a complex process by which the state’s Public Service Commission would have to set a market price for the coal-fired power units due to be retired by the Intermountain Power Agency in rural Millard County.
IPA would then have to offer the units for sale on the open market and, if nobody is foolish enough to buy the 40-year-old facility at or above the supposed fair price, offer to sell them to the state for that amount.
The risk is that the state might be dumb enough to buy them. And put the taxpayers on the hook for not only the purchase price but millions, or billions, in necessary upgrades.
PSC representatives told a legislative committee that they really don’t know how to figure out how much the coal units are worth. That they would probably have to bring on an outside consultant at a cost to taxpayers of maybe $250,000.
Though the PSC might reasonably get away with setting the true market value of the Intermountain Power Project’s coal plants at a nice round $0.
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