By Matt Ward & Sam Jacobson
Intermountain Power led news coverage throughout 2022
Developments involving Intermountain Power continued to make prominent news stories in the pages of the Chronicle Progress throughout 2022.
That’s likely not going to change in 2023 and beyond. All told, stories involving Intermountain Power, led news coverage during almost all of last year.
A few highlights from the first half of 2022 included a number of hot-button issues.
Among these was the effort carried over from 2021 by the state legislature to target Intermountain Power as a subdivision of the state—including forcing to it comply with open meetings and records laws it previously could avoid (the Chronicle Progress thoroughly enjoys attending IPA’s board meetings these days.)
The rancor between Intermountain Power and the legislature at the end of 2021 was such that a hold was put on IPA’s sale of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of municipal bonds, funding it was looking to use to start construction this year on its new hydrogen and natural gas power plant. Those plans were scrambled due to the uncertainty related to the legislative efforts.
Two bills in particular covered by the newspaper were SB92 and HB215. Local state Sen. Derrin Owens sponsored the senate bill, which forced IPA to comply with state procurement codes. HB215 was proposed by Rep. Carl Albrecht, a Republican whose District 70 represented portions of Emery, Sevier and Grand counties at the time. HB215 sought to force IPA to conform to Public Service Commission oversight. It also created a committee that would report annually to the state’s Office of Energy Development.
Both bills eventually passed with little opposition, save for some strenuous objections from IPA representatives.
Owens was recently asked during a visit to Delta whether he planned any new legislation in 2023 regarding IPA. He said he did not envision anything new, though he didn’t rule anything completely out, either.
By the end of the first half of 2022, IPA finally was able to float its municipal bonds—about $800 million worth. The sale was successful and closed on May 12.
But buried in a bond disclosure document released ahead of the sale, IPA referenced its longstanding tax dispute with Millard County. The county’s largest taxpayer, IPA has contested its centrally assessed value as set by the state tax commission every year since 2014, forcing the county to take legal action to protect its most important revenue stream. Part of this process is shrouded in secrecy and so difficult to discern from the public’s standpoint. That’s why the bond disclosure document provided some unique insight. In it IPA describes how in 2014 the state tax division placed a value on its assets of $829,450,170. Counties with IPA assets within their boundaries then used that figure to asses their own fees based on the valuation. But then the tax division later admitted it made a “computational error” and increased the value it placed on IPA’s assets to $1,031,520,000 for 2014, the bond disclosure described. IPA disputed that evaluation—and every evaluation made since—reporting that it believed its fair market value for the 2014 tax year was less than half that amount, or $499,000,000.
Depreciating every year, the county has meanwhile since seen a giant shift in tax burden from secretly assessed entities like IPA—disputing these valuations has become a lucrative cottage industry for a very small group of attorneys and large corporate clients, by the way— onto small businesses, land and homeowners. In fact, the Chronicle Progress reported last year, based on public records, that IPA disputed its taxable value some 17 times in 33 years between 1988 and 2021. IPA won reductions of its tax burden eight of those times, totaling more than $707 million in reduced value, according to records compiled by the Utah Tax Commission and requested by the newspaper in April. Such reductions spell millions in lost tax revenues to the county.
It was also revealed in mid 2022 that sometime the previous February IPA attempted to settle its long-running dispute with Millard County, offering a proposal the county countered two months later. But the bond sale delayed IPA’s consideration of the offer. And no word since has come down about where the county and IPA are on the subject of past taxes.
There have been off and on attempts to settle the tax dispute for years, including a previous attempt at formal mediation, an IPA spokesman, John Ward previously told the Chronicle Progress.
He said last year that IPA was anxious to settle the dispute once and for all.
“We will come back and take a good hard look at the county’s counteroffer and decide where we go from there,” he said in May. “We’d like nothing better than to get this settled.”
Related to these 2022 developments was the election of two Intermountain Power Project employees last to seats on the county’s three-member commission—the body that would eventually have to approve any settlement with IPA, raising all kinds of conflict questions about whether a settlement could even be voted upon if one were reached.
Those two new commissioners were sworn in Tuesday.
Three dead after Delta house fire
Three people were killed after an Easter weekend house fire in Delta.
Michael Smith Sr., Ronald Smith, and Patty Warren were all declared deceased after their residence caught fire on April 16.
Five people were inside the house at the time of the fire; two were able to escape. Ronald Smith and Warren were trapped in the home’s basement by flames; Smith Sr. was wheelchair bound and unable to get out of a bedroom.
An outpouring of grief from friends and neighbors online and through television stations revealed the victims to be beloved and generous individuals.
The cause of the fire was unknown at the time of the blaze. A fire investigation report, released in June, confirmed the cause was still unknown, though the likely origin point stemmed from underneath a wood porch at the front of the house.
Witnesses to the fire told investigators a downed, sparking power line could have been to blame. Linda Smith, a survivor, said her power had gone out for about ten minutes. When her son, Michael Glenn Smith, returned from work, he helped reset her television set, then went to a door on the east side of the home.
When Michael Smith opened the door, it was then the fire was visible, and spread quickly from the room to the rest of the house. Michael Smith told fire investigators he had heard “a loud pop,” while resetting the television set.
The report confirmed two of the victims died from smoke inhalation, the third from severe burns.
Halfway Hill fire caused by humans, four later arrested
Four people were arrested in July after sparking a wildfire just south of Fillmore.
The Halfway Hill fire started on July 8, eventually burning over 11,000 acres of private, state and federal lands.
Darri Dewolfe, Tyler Smith, Michael Patti, and Talon Kessler were arrested and charged with class A misdemeanor abandoning a fire resulting in property damage. Dewolfe, Smith and Patti all pleaded guilty and are currently serving a year in the Millard County Jail to avoid a lofty restitution.
Kesler is taking his charge to trial later this month.
A preliminary hearing in September revealed evidence during an investigation that the four had been camping near the origin point of the fire, including “trash that was strewn within the area.”
A bottle of teriyaki sauce, other condiments and food remains were left behind at the scene.
Jon Winder, a law enforcement and fire investigator with the Division of Forestry and Fire testified that the items led him review surveillance of local businesses, eventually leading him to the defendants.
Upon contacting them, Winder testified Dewolfe admitted “she believed she had started the fire.”
Dewolfe told Winder she believed a discarded cigarette, sparks from a four-wheeler, or the abandoned campfire, which the four believed had been properly extinguished, could have been to blame.
Patti, Kessler, and Smith all told Winder they too had been present at the time of the fire.
County prosecutors filed a motion to seek more than $10 million in restitution in October. The amount stems from a collective sum from different agencies, including the State of Utah, Bureau of Land Management, and the United States Forest Service and private land owners.
Patti, Dewolfe and Smith avoided the order of restitution by taking a plea deal to spend a year in jail. Kessler could still face the possibility of paying part of the hefty sum after sentencing.
Missing Wyoming man found dead by Notch Peak
A search for a missing Wyoming man ended in tragedy after his remains were identified in the county’s west desert.
Jonathan Barrett Brantley, 22, of Mt. Judea, Wyoming was reported missing by law enforcement in a social media post on April 18. The Millard County Sheriff’s Office requested the public’s help in searching for Brantley after his vehicle was located in the Notch Peak-Tule Valley area of Millard County.
Brantley had left his cell phone in his vehicle, and “it appeared the vehicle had been abandoned for an unknown amount of time,” a statement from the sheriff’s office read.
It was not the first time Brantley had gone missing. He was previously reported missing out of Arkansas in Aug. 2020, when he “decided to travel across America,” according to a news article at the time. Brantley was reportedly suicidal during his initial disappearance. He was later located safely weeks later.
The Millard County matter took a more somber turn when human remains were located on April 29.
A statement from MCSO reported they believed the remains were Brantley’s, confirmation was needed from the Utah State Medical Examiner’s Office. The body was found in the same area his truck had been found abandoned.
Brantley was later identified as the remains found in the desert. The state medical examiner positively identified in a statement on May 12. No cause of death was released at the time.
Brantley’s family released a statement on social media following his identification.
“We as a family are grateful for this gift of closure. Thank you for those who stood with us in the discomfort, praying and hoping for things we would normally never want to pray or hope for. You have covered us, and we love you for it,” the statement reads.
2022 Primary Election changed face of county government
Last year’s election reached its most interesting pinnacle early in the process thanks to the closed primary system adopted by the state’s Republican Party.
Millard County being heavily Republican, many important races locally were decided not in November, but in June, during the GOP primary contest.
The two most closely watched races were for the two county commission seats up for grabs. Running for re-election was two-term incumbent Dean Draper and one-term incumbent Evelyn Warnick. They faced off against political newbies, Trevor Johnson and Vicki Lyman, respectively.
Lyman won her race outright since she had no Democrat or third-party challenger for the commission seat. She beat Warnick by more than 700 votes.
Johnson beat Draper by more than 800 votes. Unlike Lyman, he faced a challenger, United Utah candidate Johny Munoz, later during the November general contest.
Of local interest was also the race for State House District 29, which featured Fillmore resident Mark Huntsman, who won the local vote against his challenger for the GOP nod, Bridger Bolinder, but lost the districtwide contest.
Bolinder went on to win 71 percent of the vote in November.
Also of interest during election season last year was the realignment of seats that gave a portion of Millard County to Utah Senate District 28, effectively splitting the county in half.
Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers, the incumbent, faced Patrick Larson, a newcomer for the GOP nod in the June primary, winning the local race handedly.
Vickers later won the general election with 80 percent of the total vote cast.
