Crit­ics say a pro­posed leg­isla­tive fix vio­lates the spir­it of the law against spe­cial leg­is­la­tion for cor­po­ra­tions and under­cuts options for landown­ers who may rethink their involve­ment with wind developers.

The con­tro­ver­sy focus­es on the 82-megawatt Black Oak wind farm — on the draw­ing board in Stearns Coun­ty since 2008. State law requires that wind ener­gy projects be oper­a­tional with­in sev­en years. If not, landown­ers with the sev­en-year itch can rene­go­ti­ate or recon­sid­er their options. The mea­sure pro­tects prop­er­ty own­ers against spec­u­la­tors that could tie up siz­able tracts with­out fol­low­ing through on construction.

Geron­i­mo Ener­gy con­cedes Black Oak will not be up and run­ning by the time some landown­ers’ sev­en-year leas­es expire, poten­tial­ly putting the futures of 41 tur­bine wind farms on the line. The devel­op­er wants leg­is­la­tors to extend those expir­ing con­tracts one year, allow­ing time to com­plete con­struc­tion on Black Oak.

“We have a project in the mid­dle of con­struc­tion, and the leg­is­la­tion right now says it has to be in oper­a­tion at the end of sev­en years. So we thought just a one year exten­sion would help the sit­u­a­tion for this par­tic­u­lar project,” Bet­sy Engelk­ing, vice pres­i­dent of Geron­i­mo Wind Ener­gy, said at a Sen­ate Envi­ron­ment and Ener­gy Com­mit­tee hear­ing in March.

Wind pow­er skep­tics say the pro­pos­al cross­es the line, remov­ing one of the few pro­tec­tions for landown­ers involved in renew­able ener­gy devel­op­ments. Geron­i­mo Ener­gy did not respond to Watch­dog Min­neso­ta Bureau requests for comment.

“There’s no rea­son for them to go to the Leg­is­la­ture. It’s absolute­ly no busi­ness of the Leg­is­la­ture, inter­ven­ing on behalf of a wind com­pa­ny in a pri­vate con­tract with their land­hold­ers, and that’s what this is,” said Kristi Rosen­quist, a cit­i­zen watch­dog who mon­i­tors renew­able ener­gy policy.

Just the same, pro­po­nents recent­ly insert­ed a 76-word amend­ment in the 2015 Sen­ate Omnibus Ener­gy bill that re-ups landown­ers’ leas­es. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the amend­ment doesn’t name the project, but the author, Sen. Bill Weber, R‑Luverne, removed any remain­ing doubts, stip­u­lat­ing Black Oak as the facil­i­ty behind his legislation’s art­ful wordsmithing.

“The project is in its ear­ly stages of con­struc­tion. How­ev­er, it will not be com­plet­ed by the time the sev­en-year peri­od expires,” Weber said in the hear­ing. “The pur­pose of this amend­ment is to there­by extend that sev­en-year peri­od by one year to an eight-year peri­od. The amend­ment is very spe­cif­ic as to the descrip­tion of the project and it is this project.”

The Min­neso­ta Con­sti­tu­tion pro­hibits the pas­sage of spe­cial leg­is­la­tion “grant­i­ng to any pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion, asso­ci­a­tion, or indi­vid­ual any spe­cial or exclu­sive priv­i­lege, immu­ni­ty or franchise.”

“Min­neso­ta courts have cit­ed this part of the state con­sti­tu­tion to give Min­nesotans greater equal pro­tec­tion rights than the fed­er­al con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides. This pro­hi­bi­tion is square­ly aimed at pro­tect­ing peo­ple like the landown­ers in this case from being abused by unfair leg­is­la­tion that specif­i­cal­ly tips state law in favor of some­one else,” said Peter Nel­son, Direc­tor of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy for the Cen­ter of the Amer­i­can Experiment.

Black Oak has reached out to prop­er­ty owners.

“We’ve con­tact­ed all of our landown­ers about this sit­u­a­tion. We are actu­al­ly work­ing with them to effec­tu­ate a new lease that would allow us to have this exten­sion,” tes­ti­fied Bet­sy Engelk­ing, Vice Pres­i­dent of Geron­i­mo Wind Ener­gy. “…The project actu­al­ly began con­struc­tion at the end of 2014 (and) with the project actu­al­ly reach­ing some pret­ty exten­sive con­struc­tion this sum­mer, we also felt that this leg­is­la­tion would be anoth­er option.”

No state sen­a­tor voiced objec­tions to the amend­ment. The pro­vi­sion was adopt­ed as part of the Sen­ate Omnibus Ener­gy bill that will be nego­ti­at­ed with the House com­pan­ion bill lat­er in the 2015 session.

“This is a real­ly poor way to do pol­i­cy,” said Car­ol Over­land, an attor­ney who has rep­re­sent­ed res­i­dents opposed to Black Oak. “… It’s craft­ed in such a way that they don’t name it. There­fore, they would say it’s not spe­cial leg­is­la­tion. But it is designed only for this project.”