LANSING – The Michigan Senate’s attempt to bar the state from considering electric capacity needs during the air permit approval process for new power plants was rejected by the House on Friday.

The legislation (HB 5220 ) was one of the few bills the House took up during the unusual Friday session as lawmakers worked on education reforms related to the federal “Race to the Top” program.

The bill fell on a 43-54 vote, sending it to conference committee. Members of the House and Senate were named late Friday and a meeting was scheduled for 3:55 a.m. Saturday, but it was canceled, leaving the issue unresolved.

The Senate had acted late Thursday is approving an altered version of the bill, which originally was meant to extend the sunset on the air permit fee system, although it did not actually include that wording.

The move by the Senate is aimed at overriding Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s executive directive requiring the Department of Environmental Quality consider alternative energy generation in approving air permits for new power plants. That chamber also had tie-barred the bill to legislation banning the state from regulations that are stricter than the federal government’s (SB 434 ) and requiring a third party review of the permit process (SB 436 ).

Environmental groups thanked Democrats for rejecting the new bill version.

“House Democrats did the right thing for electric ratepayers and clean energy jobs by defeating this awful Senate bill,” Clean Water Action Michigan Director Cyndi Roper. “The original House bill, which deals with Clean Air Act permit fees, now goes to conference where we have to make sure that the anti-consumer Senate provisions stay out of the final legislation. This isn’t over. We will be watching the process extremely closely to make sure that the special interest provisions are kept out of the final bill.”

The original concept of the bill was to raise the air fee to provide better funding for the program, but an agreement that trades a fee increase for reforms acceptable to Republicans is elusive.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com

a>>