Amendment to corporate farm law fails

The (Minnesota) Senate Tax Committee held a last minute spur of the moment hearing on SF2305 authored by Sen. Dan Sparks that would amend the Minnesota corporate farm law to allow a non-American foreign corporation an exemption to ownership in land.

Sen. Sparks had argued that this was for a specific project in her area (Mower County) that was stuck in a bind when the parent company Goldman Sachs, sold the wind farm called Horizon Wind Energy to a Portuguese based company.

MFU President Doug Peterson testified against the bill saying that MFU opposed the bill based on the fact that our policy opposes exemptions to the law, the precedent of foreign corporations owning wind easements, and the fact that this amendment was only necessary due to the problem that wasn’t dealt with when the sale was made.

The Senators after questioning Horizon officials and supporters voted unanimously to send the bill to Agriculture committee without recommendation, basically killing the bill since the Committee was through meeting for the year. The Committee had some of the same concerns that MFU had about setting a precedent, and the late timing of the bill.

Checkout the bill at: http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php?bill=S2305.0.html&session=ls85