Buy the Farm – Contact Legislators!
Xcel Energy has been spreading more than their share in their “acquisition” of land for their CapX 2020 transmission project. They’ve been lowballing landowners, and worse, when landowners elect “Buy the Farm” under Minn. Stat. 216B.12, Subd. 4, Xcel Energy is claiming that they’re not entitled to “minimum compensation” and ” relocation” under Chapter 117 eminent domain laws, and in some cases they’re even saying that their “Buy the Farm” elections are not valid.
Corrective bills have been introduced in both the Minnesota House and Senate:
Contact the House Energy Committee members and ask them to pass the bill out of committee — landowners need these changes to Buy the Farm NOW! As members of the Energy Committee it’s their job to represent all of us in Minnesota, it’s their job to protect our Constitutional Rights to just compensation!
rep.melissa.hortman@house.mn, rep.will.morgan@house.mn, rep.pat.garofalo@house.mn, rep.susan.allen@house.mn, rep.joe.atkins@house.mn, rep.mike.beard@house.mn, rep.andrew.falk@house.mn, rep.tom.hackbarth@house.mn, rep.frank.hornstein@house.mn, rep.tim.kelly@house.mn, rep.sandra.masin@house.mn, rep.duane.quam@house.mn, rep.peggy.scott@house.mn, rep.yvonne.selcer@house.mn, rep.barb.yarusso@house.mn, bob.eleff@house.mn
District Courts have been siding with landowners, and Xcel Energy has gone to the Appellate Court, which sided with Xcel, and so now it’s at the Supreme Court. Supreme Court Oral Arguments are scheduled for April 3, 2013.
And in the St. Paul Pioneer Press:
Farmers want power company buyouts
Their attorneys charge CapX2020 leaders Twin Cities-based Xcel Energy and
Great River Energy are dragging their feet and refusing to follow the law in hopes of waiting out the farmers and making them take lesser offers. “People get to the point where they’re so tired, they just capitulate,” attorney Kirk Schnitker said. “They’re like, ‘Just pay me and get me on my way.’ And I think (the utilities) know that.”
In the TC Daily Planet: