Uniformity Needed in Assessing Wind Farms

Summary

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Creating a uniform way of assessing wind farms throughout Illinois makes sense. Its one way to encourage developers to build where wind will do the best job, not concentrate on counties where they can get the best tax deals. Legislation in both the House and Senate bases the assessments on the amount of power each "wind energy conversion device" produces. Thats a fancy way of covering anything remotely similar to huge wind turbines, such as those along I-39 in northern Illinois and those that will soon dot the landscape in eastern McLean County and in Livingston County. The bills do exclude smaller windmills, such as those used by farm families. With a standard assessment across the state, the various taxing bodies - from townships, to schools to counties - will be able to better project their tax income. And the wind-farm operators should be able to project their costs before committing to a site. A uniform assessment should also eliminate any sweet deals among local politicians to attract wind farms. Of concern to wind-farm developers is the 35 cents proposed as a charge for each kilowatt- hour of electricity. Thats a figure the experts need to wrestle with to make sure taxpayers arent cheated and the wind-farm developers are allowed a profit.What we dont understand is why proposed wind farms have prompted calls for uniform assessments that have heretofore been virtually ignored for specialized properties. There wasnt any concern over how to assess nuclear power plants, such as the one near Clinton, or automobile plants, such as the Mitsubishi Motors of North America vehicle plant on the west edge of Normal. For example, some counties would consider the machinery in the Mitsubishi plant as personal property that hasnt been taxed in Illinois since 1979. Remember when cars were taxed as personal property? Other counties call those machines "real" or permanent property that is taxed, just like your home is taxed. Without a uniform assessment procedure, the same thing could happen with wind farms. The motorized part of the turbines in Grundy County, for example, could be taxed at 95 percent of the real property value, according to Bob Kahman, supervisor of assessments in McLean County. But in McLean and Livingston counties those same parts would not be taxed, Kahman said, because they are not a permanent structure. The permanent towers are taxed throughout the state. Kahman said county assessors have been meeting with state officials for about a year on the wind-farm concern because there is a moraine that is becoming attractive to wind-farm developers. The moraine runs from Moraine View State Park, south of Ellsworth, and extends north through Livingston, LaSalle and Grundy counties. Assessors would rather see the turbines placed where they would do the most good instead of developers trying to load up areas where they could get the best tax breaks from assessments.

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Uniformity Needed in Assessing Wind Farms

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