OKLAHOMA CITY — A special session of the Oklahoma Legislature that produced a historic tax bill ended Thursday afternoon when the House adjourned sine die from what was technically an extension of the 2017 legislative term.
The Senate adjourned the special session sine die on Tuesday.
The House and Senate will continue with the regular 2018 session next week, with the first item on the agenda said to be a new tax on renewable energy generation.
Thursday’s special session adjournment started the clock running on efforts to overturn House Bill 1010xx, the $400 million revenue bill that became the first such measure passed by the Legislature since adoption of State Question 640 in 1992.
People are also reading…
Backers of a proposed referendum petition now have 90 days to submit it for approval and gather the necessary signatures — about 42,000 — to put repeal of HB 1010xx on a statewide ballot.
It is unclear how repeal of HB 1010xx would affect raises for school personnel and state employees dependent on that measure’s new revenue and approved in a companion bill.
SQ 640 was a constitutional amendment requiring a three-fourths vote of both chambers of the Legislature, or a vote of the people, to raise taxes. Such a supermajority had not been achieved until the House and Senate approved HB 1010xx earlier this year.
The Legislature appears headed to a second such vote, though, early next week.
House Majority Leader Jon Echols, R-Oklahoma City, said Thursday afternoon that House Republicans and Democrats have agreed upon a $1 per megawatt tax on new investor-owned renewable energy generation — which, currently in Oklahoma, consists entirely of wind.
The state would impose the tax rather than further diminish the value of tax credits already issued the wind industry, Echols said.
Attacking the wind credits would probably be easier legislatively, since it would require only simple majorities, but Echols said the new tax is better long-term policy and more amenable to the wind industry.
“It will be a growing revenue source that will help stabilize the budget,” Echols said. “It’s going to start small, because (the tax) won’t apply to existing projects, but it will grow over time.”
“As an industry, we see this as a reasonable proposal but also in the best interest of the state,” said Mark Yates, Oklahoma director of the Wind Coalition.
Yates said further reducing the value of the tax credits, as has been proposed, would have caused operating projects to default on their financing and lawsuits from investors against the state.
The state is no longer issuing the wind credits, which are good for 10 years, and no longer offers any incentives for wind or other renewable energy generation. It will be the first major wind energy state to assess a generation tax.
