By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A northwest Missouri state representative is disappointed the legislature couldn’t stop the Grain Belt Express, but pleased future projects will be subject to more regulations.
Rep. Dean Van Schoiack of Savannah says he went to the House floor several times in opposition to the project to take wind-generated electricity across northern Missouri.
“I’m disappointed also that I know a lot of farmers are going to have their land split up by that line,” Van Schoiack tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
Van Schoiack says a Buchanan County farmer with 300 acres in the Rushville bottoms will be negative affected by Grain Belt.
“It’s going to cut diagonally across his land,” according to Van Schoiack. “It’s going to preclude him basically from flying on insecticides and herbicides. It’s going to mess up his GPS for his farming operation. It’s going to vastly affect the value of that 300-acre farm.”
The Grain Belt Express proposes transmitting electricity generated from Kansas wind farms across northern Missouri and other midwestern states to households along the East Coast. Northern Missouri community leaders and state officials have fought the project in each of the last three legislative session. The Missouri General Assembly reached a compromise during this past legislative session that will allow the project to proceed, but will require future projects to pay 150% of the fair market value for easements and be subject to other regulations.
Van Schoiack is pleased with how the legislature handled the state budget this session, pointing out an influx of federal coronavirus relief and stimulus money swelled the state budget from $36 billion to $47 billion.
“And because we have increase state revenues over the year,” Van Schoiack says. “Even with COVID, our state revenues increased. It will be interesting to see what kind of figures we have to work with next year for budget to see where we’re at and what we’re able to fund in that way, too.”
Van Schoiack says it is important that the legislature fully funded the state school formula and provided full funding of the state portion to pay for school bus service. The budget also includes $500 million to provide taxpayers a tax rebate of $500 for individuals and $1,000 for couples.
“Any time we can give some money back to people through tax income rebates or credits, I think that’s a very good thing to do.”
Van Schoiack says the legislature could afford to be generous, because of the huge influx of federal funds.