We’re often our own worst enemies.
It wasn’t always this way.
It was “Democratic Socialist” policies, rooted in The New Deal, that gave rural America the foundation upon which we built our network of thriving agriculturally-based communities. Rural electrification made irrigation possible across the broad expanse of the Central Great Plains; it powered factories and provided modern conveniences for our grandparents and great-grandparents. Federally-subsidized crop insurance and crop support payments offer the ultimate safety net for farmers and ranchers. Federal subsidies fuel cooperative-based telephone companies, community district hospitals, and extended living care facilities. Water systems and rural waste treatment plants provide even more examples of our working together – all fueled by federal dollars. Most of these were funded by USDA’s Rural Utility Services Agency (RUS).
Far from being our enemy, federal and state governments have long been full partners in creating rural wealth. It took our vision, initiative, and entrepreneurship in partnership, but all of this was possible because of our mutually aligned interests.
Federal and state policies continue to offer us new opportunities, but we’ve lost our compass by not realizing the full extent of the possibilities. We’ve become paralyzed with the “us vs. them” mentality that disconnects logic from the broader, more necessary discussion – one that sees everyone else, those other people, as our customers.
This imperative equation for a capitalist system, rural or otherwise, is best served when sound public policy drives the market as it always has, even though we in rural America try to pretend differently.
Over the past two decades, rural Colorado has missed two significant opportunities to flourish from public policy, Amendment 37 and Amendment 64. As a broad critique, we were lied to by our representatives, our rural cooperatives, and our local leaders. I’ll dive into each one separately:
Amendment 37 – Co-chaired by Democrat Mark Udall and Republican Speaker of the House Lola Spradley. It is the first citizen-initiated renewable energy standard in the nation.
Passed in 2004 despite massive spending and legal challenges by Xcel Energy, Intermountain Rural Electric, and Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Amendment 37 set the stage for Colorado’s New Energy Economy. At the heart of the Amendment was a 10% mandate for green energy by 2015 and the movement’s goal to bring new opportunities to community-based energy systems.
Implementation of the Amendment’s language was arduous, thanks to a concerted effort by the state’s various utilities. A settlement was finally agreed to only after giving Xcel the green light to build the Commanche III coal plant in Pueblo, which has proven to be an anvil around Colorado taxpayers’ necks.
Almost without exception, every rural county (Read: where we have the wind and solar resources to produce the product) voted against the Amendment; every urban county (Read: consumers willing to buy the product) voted for the Amendment.
At the time, there was strong support from urban progressives and environmentalists to maximize the amount of rural ownership of these systems. In this case, we had Front Range consumers willing to pay a premium for a commodity they were ready to mandate into their electrical grid. A commodity we were drowning in was rural wind and solar.
What rural legislator in their right mind wouldn’t have set aside their active dislikes of those people – urban ratepayers and environmentalists – to take this deal?
Sadly, we fought – fight and fight some more – for a coal plant in Kansas!
Even though the Obama Administration had allocated billions to a USDA Rural Utilities Services (RUS) fund written specifically for rural electrics to tap said funds and build energy systems for export to other utilities, we fought.
And fought. And fought. God forbid we of rural Colorado would give any environmentalist or a Democratic president a win on green energy.
This “fight” was about freedom from tyranny!!!
Despite valiant efforts by our representatives, “tyranny” won. Today, this “tyranny” generates billions of dollars from rural investment in wind energy systems.
Local rural electric systems, which declined ownership of the systems, indirectly reaped benefits for every rural electric patron in the state. Many, but not all, of our rural counties benefit from the property tax revenues (often the largest source of income in some counties) from these wind farms.
Had we looked at this opportunity through the lens of rural wealth creation, we’d have chosen a different path. We’d have enjoyed the benefits of the property tax and the wealth created by rural cooperatives’ ownership of those systems for all their members.
To be continued: Amendment 64
Michael Bowman is a Colorado agriculturalist and longtime advocate for federal policies that strengthen rural communities and focus on alternative crops, natural resource sustainability, soil health, renewable energy, and environmental markets. …