Hyperion Refinery? No Way! 26 Reasons

Kelsey at Dakota Women turns a well-deserved spotlight on "From Z to A," where Union County native Karen Eidem lists 26 darn good reasons for her parents and other Union County voters to say no to the Hyperion refinery in the election June 3. Here's just a sample of Karen's arguments:

Young people

On May 5, the Sioux City Journal reported that many Young People will consider leaving the area if the refinery is built. Of Young people aged 18-24 years, 38% said they would consider moving if a refinery is built. Of Young people aged 25-34, 29% would consider moving....

Oil

Oil is not progressive. We know (and have known for a long time) that we have limited amounts of Oil -- it is a non-renewable fossil fuel....

VIABLE ENERGY OPTIONS EXIST to heat and cool our homes and businesses, to create products, and -- yes -- even to run our cars. But we as consumers need to demand it; we do not need to propogate a 20th century way of thinking and consuming....

Gas Prices

It is all over the news and you feel it every time you fill up -- Gas prices are high. But this particular refinery will not ensure they will go down:

1) The dirty, heavy crude from the Tar Sands is extremely difficult and costly to refine. In fact, the only reason oil companies are pursuing this oil right now is because Gas prices are high; otherwise, it is not worth the cost of investment. Therefore, oil companies need Gas prices to stay high in order to make a profit from Tar Sands crude and it would be better for their profit margins if gas prices go higher.

2) On April 24th on South Dakota Public Television, Hyperion said that there is no guarantee that anyone in South Dakota will be using the Gas they produce. In fact, the only way South Dakota will get the Gas is if the state offers the best contract at the best price.

3) To add insult to injury, many areas near refineries have an extra Gas tax to offset auxillary costs of a refinery. That's what happens elsewhere; will it happen here? [Karen Eidem, "From Z to A: 26 Reasons to Vote No June 3," May 2008]

Still think a refinery is going to save us money at the pump? Think again...

There's much much more at From Z to A, which I highly recommend. Good arguments, lots of links so you can do your own reading, and even colorful yet tasteful typography! And Karen provides her e-mail address, so she's not afraid to put her name to her words and talk to you about the issue. Good work, Karen!

TIF Housing District: Still Affordable for City and Low-Income Buyers?

As reported earlier, the Madison City Commission considers an amendment to the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District at tonight's meeting. The amount of debt the city is being asked to assume for this private housing development has increased 63% from $203,485 to $330,500. The new cost list (from tonight's city commission agenda packet, PDF format):

1. Acquisition of property and demolition: $45,000
2. Approx. 660 feet of water, sewer, asphalt, curb & gutter: $214,000
3. Engineering & construction admin fees: $24,000
4. Contingency/miscellaneous: $4,000
5. Capitalized interest (2 yrs): $40,000
6. Attorney fees: $3,500
   

Now I was going to compare this cost breakdown with the original details submitted to the City Commission by developer Randy Schaefer back in November. Alas, that commission agenda packet has been removed from the city website. Tonight's agenda packet contains none of the maps or explanatory materials on the proposed TIF.

The big question: will this 63% increase in costs push the price of houses in the development out of the affordable range for the low- and middle-income buyers the TIF district was originally proposed to serve? Kerry Karlson asked that question at the Planning Commission meeting last Tuesday. Schaefer "hopes the construction bids come in lower and that in the end they keep lots under $20,000" [Madison Planning Commission Proceedings, 2008.05.13].

Resolution 2678, the authorization of the TIF on tonight's agenda, includes the following:

[Clause 6.2] It is in the best interests of the City to authorize the borrowing of funds to pay a portion of the costs of the Public Improvements and other costs associated therewith for the Project by authorizing and issuing its Tax Incremental Revenue Notes consistent with the terms approved hereby for an aggregate sum not in excess of the amount of $330,500.00....

[Clause 7] It is hereby determined to be necessary and in the best interests of the City and its inhabitants that this City Commission authorize the Note to be executed in order to finance a portion of the cost of the Project.

Necessary? The mayor, the LAIC, and others may want the TIF, but need is a different question. The need originally posited was for affordable housing. If our hopes for low bids are not fulfilled and lots end up out of a typical workingman's price range, will the city still back the project to build expensive homes for more well-to-do buyers? Or is the city going to impose some accountability and say, "We only provide public funding if the houses built will cost no more than $120,000" (or provide your own threshold for "affordable housing").

Absent from the planning commission proceedings or tonight's agenda packet is any mention of the vaunted Lake Area Improvement Corporation housing study. Director Dwaine Chapel was at last week's Planning Commission meeting, but if he mentioned anything about how the TIF District helps fulfill needs identified in the housing study, nothing went on the record.

I'd flip through the housing study myself, but I got confirmation from Dwaine Chapel himself this month that any citizen must pay $250 to even look at the study. (This confirmation from the top came two and a half months after my initial question, a full month after I e-mailed Chapel directly per his staff's recommendation that I contact him directly, and even then, only after I dropped by the office in person to follow up.) Chapel says there's no law that requires the LAIC to make the housing study public.

I contend otherwise. The city is about to go into 63% more debt than expected to support a private housing development, based on a claim of a need for more affordable housing. The supposedly reliable data we have is sitting in the LAIC office. Rather than making that supposedly reliable data available only to folks with $250 to throw away, the LAIC should make that study available to every taxpayer who will be affected by this TIF district. That would include everyone in the school district and county, which will have to make up for the tax revenue they can't access in the TIF by imposing higher taxes elsewhere or cutting their budgets.

Without access to the housing study (I still have the executive summary, but more detail would help!) we are left to conduct our own assessment of the housing market in Madison. HomeViewSiouxFalls.com lists 35 homes on the Madison market right now under $120,500, the standard cited in the housing study executive summary as the benchmark for affordability in Lake County. Think they're all shacks? Check out the beauty in this picture: right by campus, within easy walking distance of the fitness center, Dairy Queen, and the grocery store, only $112,900 (call Paula Pearson, Madison Realty, 256-3888 -- and even though I get no commission, tell her the Madville Times sent you!)

Let's consider this TIF district from a different abgle: In discussing the city's requirement that homeowners pay for their own sidewalks, some of my commenters said it wouldn't be fair for the city to help pay for that infrastructure now, since homeowners in the past have all been required to pay for their own sidewalks. I seem to recall newly minted city commissioner Dick Ericsson making the same point at the candidates forum on April 3. So has the city footed the bill for the installation of sewer, curb and gutter, or any of that other infrastructure for developers in the past? If not, what is the city's rationale for offering such assistance now?

Last winter, Randy Schaefer's assurance that TIF district would serve the purpose of creating more affordable working-class housing made me think the project might have some merit. But folks like John Hess and some local realtors have pointed out that Madison already has a pretty big market of decent affordable houses. The city and LAIC appear unwilling to share hard evidence to the contrary. And even if there is a need for more affordable housing, the 63% price jump calls into question whether this TIF district will be able to meet that need.

Will the city commission address these questions tonight? Or will we hear nothing but the great smooshy sound of the rubber stamp? Come to City Hall in Madison, 5:30 p.m. tonight, to find out.

Gas Price Spike Pops Housing Bubble

That's the conclusion reached by Oregon economist/consultant Joe Cortright in "Driven to the Brink," a study prepared for CEOS for Cities and noted on the Wall Street Journal blog. Writes Cortright:

The collapse of America’s housing bubble—and its reverberations in financial markets—has obscured a tectonic shift in housing demand. Although housing prices are in decline almost everywhere, price declines are generally far more severe in far-flung suburbs and in metropolitan areas with weak close-in neighborhoods. The reason for this shift is rooted in the dramatic increase in gas prices over the past five years. Housing in cities and neighborhoods that require lengthy commutes and provide few transportation alternatives to the private vehicle are falling in value more precipitously than in more central, compact and accessible places [Joe Cortright, "Driven to the Brink: How the Gas Price Spike Popped the Housing Bubble and Devalued the Suburbs" (PDF format!), white paper, May 2008, p. 1]

Cortright says that government efforts to help struggling homeowners make their payments and to crack down on predatory lenders will ease the housing crisis, but gas prices will have a lasting effect on home values and urban/suburban development. He sees an opportunity for cities to make themselves more livable and affordable:

The new landscape of housing prices and high fuel costs has important implications for public policy. Cities that offer attractive urban living opportunities in close-in neighborhoods, enabling people to drive shorter distances and make convenient use of alternatives to car travel, are likely to be more affordable and economically successful than places that continue to follow sprawling development patterns. Working to promote land use patterns that enable mixed-use development and provide more bikeable, walkable neighborhoods served by transit will provide multiple benefits, including cutting gas bills, reducing the trade deficit and reducing global warming [Cortright, p. 2]

Have you seen all that downtown development in Sioux Falls? Phillips to the Falls? Downtown apartments? All those folks riding their bikes to work? Sounds like they've caught the wave of the future.

Rise and Fall of Great Powers 2008

In today's Washington Post, Kevin Phillips resurrects Paul Kennedy's specter of the coming fall of a great power near and dear to our hearts (um, that would be us). Philips wonders if our "unprecedented debt levels, soaring commodity prices and sliding home prices, to say nothing of a weak dollar" mark the beginning of the end for an America destined to join Rome, Spain, the Netherlands, and Great Britain on the list of late great world powers.

I'm nowhere near trading in my savings bonds or my passport. But I do catch one passage in Phillips's essay that I offer as a semi-tangential response to my Madison readers who occasionally suggest that the key to economic development lies in getting some credit card company to plunk call center down in Madison:

The most chilling parallel with the failures of the old powers is the United States' unhealthy reliance on the financial sector as the engine of its growth. In the 18th century, the Dutch thought they could replace their declining industry and physical commerce with grand money-lending schemes to foreign nations and princes. But a series of crashes and bankruptcies in the 1760s and 1770s crippled Holland's economy. In the early 1900s, one apprehensive minister argued that Britain could not thrive as a "hoarder of invested securities" because "banking is not the creator of our prosperity but the creation of it." By the late 1940s, the debt loads of two world wars proved the point, and British global economic leadership became history [Kevin Phillips, "The Old Titans All Collapsed: Is the U.S. Next?" Washington Post, 2008.05.18, page B03].

O.K., maybe that's really tangential. But it's just something to sit on the porch and ponder on this glorious and finally un-windy Sunday.

Obama: The Feminist Choice III

Keesha puts a burr under my saddle, and my morning reading leads me to "Hillary's Nasty Pastorate" by Barbara Ehrenreich, a good practical feminist if ever I read one.

Now my friends of all religious inclinations can spend their Sunday debating whether the Fellowship Foundation (or "The Family," as Ehrenreich refers to it) is just nice folks getting together for breakfast (with Bono, for Pete's sake!) or a secret Christian mafia. What catches my attention is this comment on actual policy:

Furthermore, The Family takes credit for some of Clinton's rightward legislative tendencies, including her support for a law guaranteeing "religious freedom" in the workplace, such as for pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions and police officers who refuse to guard abortion clinics [Barbara Ehrenreich, "Hillary's Nasty Pastorate," The Nation, 2008.03.19].

The legislation in question: the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, legislation that crops up in some form or another regularly in Congress and then disappears into committee. It sounds like a good idea -- it would protect workers' rights to wear religious headgear or refuse to work on the Sabbath. However, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States says the WRFA would unnecessarily upset protections already in current law and make possible these scenarios:

1. An ambulance driver could refuse to drive a woman from an abortion clinic to a hospital.
2. A pharmacist could refuse to fill birth control or emergency contraception prescriptions.
3. A nurse could refuse to participate in an emergency c-section for a woman in danger of bleeding to death.
4. A police officer could refuse to protect an abortion clinic.

Those possibilities motivated the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and the National Women's Law Center to oppose the bill.

Those scenarios appeared nowhere in Senator Clinton's 2005 speech to the Seventh Day Adventists Annual Religious Liberty Dinner. Those scenarios also did not prevent her from co-sponsoring the 2005 version of the WRFA. Also signing on to Senator Rick Santorum's bill were Senators Schumer, Kerry, Lieberman, Coleman, Coburn, and Brownback.

Not joining her as a co-sponsor: Senator Obama.

My conclusion: Clinton is willing to put women's freedoms at risk when it is politically convenient. Obama has to play politics as well, but on women's issues*, he's shown a superior commitment to principle.

*"women's issues" -- that's probably a sexist term. Women's issues are everyone's issues.

Madison Tax Increment District Price Tag Jumps 63%

The Madison City Commission will discuss changes to the Tax Increment District plan it approved last November. The original price tag was $203,485. MDL reports that the commission will discuss a supplemental resolution to cover the new cost of the project: $330,000.

O.K., prices have gone up since November, but a 63% increase in the debt taxpayers will assume on this private development? Uff da! Maybe the city commission needs to take time at its Monday meeting to ask whether this is really the bill of goods they were sold back in November.

I'll have more on this later, after I've done some reading. The May 19 city commission agenda has some details you can read for yourself. (Maybe I'll even be able to bum a look at someone's copy of the LAIC's housing study, which is still available only to folks willing to fork over $250.)

California Supreme Court OKs Gay Marriage, No Signs of Apocalypse

So the California Supreme Court rules that the state cannot discriminate among folks seeking marriage licenses, and the Earth doesn't go crashing into the sun.

You may ask, What's this have to do with South Dakota? That's just those wacky Californians, right?

Well, according to Equality South Dakota (not to mention what you know about your own small towns and those folks you try not to talk about), there are same-sex couples all around this state. Some of them have children. They've made commitments to each other as lasting as the guy-girl relationships we prefer to display on our state promotional materials. Those couples are contributing as much to our state in terms of paying taxes, participating in the labor force, raising kids, and being good neighbors as anyone else. Of course, basic human rights don't depend on work; they're just something we have from the start and can't take away from others just because they're different.

Equality before the law shouldn't depend on whom you sleep with. Love is love, and commitment is commitment. Let's take the California Supreme Court's ruling -- not to mention common courtesy and respect for our neighbors -- as our cue to repeal our 2006 Amendment C and get the homophobia out of our state Constitution.

Obama SF Rally, Part II: Americans Are "Our Brother's Keeper"

Obama continues his address to a Sioux Falls Arena audience KELO estimates at 5,100:

Health care: Obama repeats his vow to pass some form of universal health care by the end of his first term. Save each family $2500, make the Congressional plan available to everyone, get rid of exclusions for pre-existing conditions, and focus on prevention -- "we don't need disease care; we need health care."

Energy: Obama says wind, solar, and biofuels aren't just about clean energy; they're about more jobs -- five million new jobs, he says, just waiting for us to change our energy focus.

Education: I'm still not hearing the call that Clinton made to repeal No Child Left Behind, but I am at least hearing Obama say he wants teachers teaching art and music and civics and not just teaching to a single standardized high-stakes test. Obama also promises to make college affordable, but this is no handout: he says young people can expect to work for that assistance, to do some form of community service.

Foreign policy: Obama notes Bush's suggestion at Israel's Knesset that some in America want to appease the enemy. Appeasement? Bush, says Obama, is the one who hasn't caught bin Laden. Bush is the one who got distracted with the war in Iraq.

Obama says we can lead the world in tracking down terrorists, but he asks us to imagine the positive effect on America's image by trying to lead in locking down loose nuclear weapons, lead in fighting poverty, and bring an end to the genocide in Darfur. Obama also vows to close Guantanamo and restore habeas corpus because we believe in civil liberties in America. There's a message for the rest of the world about what America is about.

Indian country: Obama says even a people with the richest culture may be stuck in despair and poverty when they have spent so many years seeing betrayal and broken promises.

Obama notes the election is not about making government bigger or waiting for the government to solve everything. Putting more money in education is great, but parents need to "put away the video game and the television set" and make sure kids are learning. We can create public service programs, but young people have step up. "We have to get back to the notion that I am my brother's keeper and my sister's keeper."

Obama says if the other side wants to make this election about him personally, he'll take them on. Obama's grandfather served under Patton in Word War II, marched across Europe; his grandmother worked on the homefront on a bomber assembly line. Grandfather got GI Bill education; they got government loans to help build their first house. Mom had to go on food stamps to get by. Wife Michelle's dad had multiple sclerosis but was still able to work for the city, provide for a family of four kids on that single income and send the kids to college. Obama says his biography is about the patriotism we all know and live, about the hope and opportunity America is about.

Obama Speaks in Sioux Ci-- oops! Sioux Falls!

Senator Barack Obama takes the stage at 7:30 p.m. and exclaims, "Thank you, Sioux City!" Oops... thankfully, the good Senator catches himself, notes he spent eight months campaigning in Iowa.

Senator Obama notes that Tom Daschle has been with him from the beginning, when there weren't a lot of "poobahs" backing him.

Obama says when he announced, people asked him why he was running now, so early. You're young, people told him, you can afford to wait. "I'm not running because it's my turn... I'm running because of something Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now." He says wages are lower now than seven years ago, groceries and gas and everything else cost more, 47 million people don't have health insurance, those who are ensured have seen premiums go up as much as 78%. "We can't afford to wait to solve those problems."

Obama talks about his community organizing in Chicago's South Side, working to bring the white, black, and Latino communities together to bring jobs to the communities the steel mills abandoned.

--nuts! And then just as some interesting disruption in the crowd catches everyone's attention, including Obama's, the video feed goes down. Grr!

Audio comes back: we hear Obama say we don't need warrantless wiretaps or tax cuts for the rich. And he says John McCain will continue those policies and the other failures of the Bush Administration.

"Not every problem is the fault of just one party or just one person. We've been talking about the health care system for decades now." Obama says the drug and insurance companies have spent one billion dollars in the last decade to prevent health care reform. Ditto on oil and energy: Obama says the only thing that has changed since the 1970s oil crises has been that we import more oil. Why doesn't energy policy doesn't work? Well, Bush put Cheney in charge of energy policy, Cheney met with the oil and gas companies 40 times, the renewable outfits and environmental groups once. It's not enough to just change the political parties in charge; we've got to reduce the influence of special interests, which is what Obama's support of lobbying reforms last year was about. That's why Obama says his campaign is not taking money from PACs and registered lobbyists.

Step two: truth-telling! Obama notes McCain's support for the gas tax holiday (he doesn't mention Clinton here!). Obama says the Illinois experiment with cutting the gas tax showed the oil companies don't lower the prices. The real way to reduce oil prices is invest in alternative energy, raise auto fuel efficiency standards ("and save the planet in the bargain").

Ah, someone puts up a Hillary sign (Anna, did you fly in?), and Obama says, let that person do it. It's a free country, we're a unified party. "There'll be a lot of Hillary signs at the convention; there'll be a lot of Obama signs too." He does suggest the Hillary supporter think about the people behind her who can't see -- "that's just being neighborly."

Obama SF Rally: Daschle Primes the Crowd

McGovern delivered the benediction; now Daschle takes the stage to pump up the crowd. Podium gone, he's working the stage (and making the KELO cameraperson earn her/his pay). Policywise, Daschle notes his current policy focus, health care, and says Obama is the one to bring everyone quality, affordable coverage. He also says Obama will make it possible to pay teachers what they deserve (no mention of Obama's plan to take over the South Dakota Legislature to make that happen -- that part is up to us, I think!), tackle environmental issues, even reform government-to-government relations with the tribes.

Sioux Falls Obama Rally: McGovern Opens

George McGovern opens for Senator Obama at the Sioux Falls rally tonight (see the live feed at KELO), in front of an audience KELO's Lou Raguse estimates at 5,000 (o.k., it's Lou Raguse counting -- your grains of salt are acceptable). McGovern notes that after he endorsed Senator Clinton last October in Iowa, his four kids and ten grandkids all enlisted in the Obama campaign. "Shows how much influence I have at home," joked McGovern. He compliments the Clintons, acknowledges how they "worked their hearts out" on his 1972 campaign, and says they will always remain close friends. But now, says McGovern is time to unite behind Obama and make the charge for change in November.

McGovern repeats his suggestion that in Obama, Illinois may be producing its "second Lincoln." He points to his impression that Obama may help bring back the ability of the two parties to cooperate, as McGovern recalls they could during his own tenure in the Senate, when he could work easily with Kansas Senator Bob Dole on veterans issues and reach across the aisle to start WIC. Obama also "consistently appeals to the better angels of our nature. he is our best hope, in Lincoln's words, for a just and lasting peace among ourselves and for with all nations."

Sad Electoral Note: Florence Steen Loses Vote

Kevin Woster reports that the ballot of Florence Steen, the 88-year-old woman who cast a deathbed vote for Hillary Clinton, is being thrown out. Mrs. Steen got to fulfill a dream and mark her absentee ballot for a female presidential candidate on April 29. She succumbed to congestive heart failure on Mother's Day, and was laid to rest yesterday. Given this due proof of the absentee voter's death prior to the opening of the polls on June 3, Pennington County Auditor Julie Pearson is required by South Dakota law (SDCL 12-19-9.2, 12-19-49) to pull the ballot and return it to sender unopened.

One of my readers had asked if that ballot would count. As we thought about it, we figured similar absentee ballots that outlived those who cast them must have slipped through the system before. And there's no fraud here, just an honest woman who cast an honest vote. I agree with Senator Clinton on this one: such a vote ought to count.

I wonder: would counting such absentee ballots create any problems? Unless someone can show some potential for chicanery, it seems changing the law to honor "dying wish" votes would be a perfectly decent thing to do. We can't change the law for this year's primary or the general election, but maybe our legislators can put a sticky note in their planners for the 2009 session: change the death rules on absentee ballots.