4A
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2019
The Observer
OUR VIEW
No good
reason
for appeal
The La Grande City Council had little choice in
deciding Wednesday night to allow the Union
County Warming Station to open. Oregon’s land use
laws meant the council could consider only certain
criteria in deciding to uphold or deny the appeal on
the station’s conditional use permit.
Even that was a bit confusing. Supporting the
appeal meant opposing the opening of the station.
Denying the appeal meant wanting it to open.
The city planning commission already unani-
mously voted to allow the station the conditional use
of the building at 2008 Third St. to house the home-
less and others in need during cold winter nights.
Finding reason to overturn the vote from the city’s
own commission would be a high bar. And appeal
supporters could not make a suffi cient enough case
for the shelter having serious adverse effects on the
neighborhood.
Thus the 7-0 vote to deny had the look of the
inevitable.
But this is where walking the line of public policy
intersects with helping people who need help and
need it now. And Al Adelsberger, the man who fi led
the appeal to the council, should not appeal the coun-
cil’s decision to the state Land Use Board of Appeals.
Adelsberger and other appeal supporters admit-
ted during the course of the public hearing that La
Grande needs to do something to help the homeless.
They just do not agree a downtown shelter is it.
But it is.
If you gash your hand wide open on a kitchen
knife, you grab a cloth, towel or something to help
stop the bleeding. And then you go to the hospital’s
emergency room for help.
The shelter serves as that stop gap for people
without a home. Dwight Johnson, who oversees the
warming station in Pendleton, put it this way: “Our
mission is to keep them from freezing to death.”
Shelter supporters are working to do just that here
in La Grande.
But that does not stop anyone from working on the
bigger picture Adelsberger pointed out the commu-
nity needs, including transitional housing and more
vocational training.
Mayor Steve Clements stepped up and admitted
he and the rest of the city council should have long
ago taken leadership roles inn this pressing issue.
He promised to get involved and work toward a more
comprehensive solution.
Adelsberger and others passionate about this
should take Clements up on his commitment. Adels-
berger obviously knows how to organize support
for a cause, and he carries enough clout to hold the
mayor and the rest of the council accountable if they
don’t come through.
He and others should apply their skills to help
make the warming station and the programs it offers
the best they can be. They should work it out here,
at the local level, and not waste more time with an
appeal to the state.
OTHER VIEWS
Trump should veto greedy Green Act
I
n a mad dash to expand all their
favorite “green” cash grabs before the
end of the year, House Democrats have
published their most bloated smash
and grab yet.
They call it the Green Act, but a bet-
ter name might be the Greed Act. The
bill extends wind and solar subsidies —
which we’ve been promised for decades
would be temporary — for yet another
fi ve years. In an effort to gain support
from farm states, it revives the biodiesel
credit.
Most outrageously, the Green Act
cancels the phase-out of the electric
vehicle subsidies by tripling the per-
manufacturer cap. It also ignores
rampant fraud and creates a new
subsidy for used electric vehicles,
despite the fact the original rationale
— dependence on foreign oil — is now
completely obsolete.
Because no green cash grab would
be compete without lavishing taxpayer
dollars on the campus left, the bill
includes an eye-popping $5 billion in
grants for university “environmental
justice” programs. Shameless.
With Nancy Pelosi fi rmly in control,
the Green Act could well pass the
House, either by itself or more likely as
part of a larger year-end package. So
the real fi ght looks likely to be in the
Senate, where Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer can be expected to go to the
mat for the electric vehicles subsidies,
if not the whole package. In fact, he
recently proposed an electric-vehicles-
subsidies-meets-cash-for-clunkers on
steroids concept that would pay to
scrap every internal combustion vehicle
in the country in the most brazen dis-
play of wealth destruction via central
planning ever attempted outside of the
Communist Bloc. So he can be expect-
ed, at a minimum, to push hard for the
House language on electric vehicles.
That language would triple the
cap on subsidies of $200,000 per
manufacturer — which has already
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tax breaks. But if it does, President
Trump should make clear that he’ll
have his veto pen ready.
Phil Kerpen is the president of American
Commitment and the author of
“Democracy Denied.”
Kerpen can be reached at phil@
americancommitment.org.
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been reached by Tesla and GM, who
of course have unleashed armies of
lobbyists to keep the taxpayer lar-
gesse fl owing. A token cut in the credit
amount from $7,500 to $7,000 would be
meaningless, thanks to a new credit of
up to $2,500 for used electric vehicles.
This program is an almost pure tax
break for the rich, and those rich are
well represented by their Democratic
representatives and senators. Especial-
ly from California, which gets nearly
half of all the subsidies dollars, and
New York, which ranks second.
The Pacifi c Research Institute looked
at IRS data and found that more than
half of the electric car buyers claiming
the credit make more than $200,000
per year and nearly 80% make more
than $100,000. Just 1% make $50,000
or less.
Worse, a signifi cant number of the
predominantly wealthy people claim-
ing the credit are doing so fraudulently.
The Treasury Inspector General found
in a new report that 16,510 tax returns
claiming “potentially erroneous” electric
vehicle tax credits, totaling $73.8 mil-
lion. The IRS doesn’t check VINs, and
it looks like credits have been allowed
for ineligible vehicles. It also appears
there is a particular problem with
leased vehicles, in which the leasing
company claims the credit and builds
it into the lease payment, but then the
lessee claims the credit a second time,
effectively doubling the subsidy.
The simplest way to end the fraud
would be to let the program phase out
as scheduled. But Congress looks at
rampant fraud and instead wants to
expand the program. Unreal.
Nothing in the Green Act deserves to
see the light of day in the Senate, espe-
cially the expansion of electric vehicle
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