Vote Smart's Synopsis:

Vote to pass a bill that establishes standards for assessing solar and wind projects for tax collection purposes.

Highlights:

• Classifies "permit authority" as the following (Sec. 1-4):

• A unit; or

• A board, a commission, or any other governing body of a unit that makes legislative or administrative decisions concerning the construction, installation, siting, modification, operation, or decommissioning of wind power devices in the unit.

• Prohibits a permit authority from directly or indirectly, restricting, or imposing conditions or limitations on, the construction, installation, siting, modification, operation, or decommissioning of one or more wind power devices in the unit unless the unit first adopts a wind power regulation (Sec. 1-9.a).

• Authorizes a unit to do the following (Sec. 1-9.d):

• Adopt and enforce a wind power regulation that includes standards that: and

• Concern the construction, installation, siting, modification, operation, or decommissioning of wind power devices in the unit; and

• Are less restrictive than the standards set forth in this chapter;

• Waive or make less restrictive any standard set forth in;

• This chapter; or

• A wind power regulation adopted by the unit.

• Prohibits a project owner from installing or locating one or more wind power devices in a unit unless the project owner demonstrates to the permit authority that with respect to each wind power device that the project owner seeks to install or locate in the unit the following (Sec. 1-11.a):

• The project owner has used shadow flicker computer modeling to estimate the amount of shadow flicker anticipated to be caused by the wind power device; and

• The wind power device has been designed so that industry standard computer modeling indicates that any dwelling on a nonparticipating property within the unit will not experience more than 30 hours per year of shadow flicker under planned operating conditions for the wind power device.

• Establishes a wind power device installed in a unit must be installed in a manner so as to minimize and mitigate impacts to (Sec. 1-12):

• Television signals;

• Microwave signals;

• Agricultural global positioning systems;

• Military defense radar;

• Radio reception; or

• Weather and doppler radar.

• Specifies if a project owner installs a CSE system in a unit, the project owner must plant, establish, and maintain for the life of the CSE system perennial vegetation on the ground around and under solar panels, and in project site buffer areas (Sec. 2-11).

Full Bill Text