CONTRACTING & ACQUISITIONNew Mexico Senate Bill to ensure tax levies for labs clears committee Albuquerque Journal | January
26, 2018
SANTA FE – A renewed attempt to ensure New Mexico can keep levying a tax on contractors that run the state’s national laboratories – whether they’re nonprofits or private consortiums – cleared its first Senate committee on Friday.
The current operating
contract for Los Alamos National Laboratory expires in September, and three university systems are known to be among the groups bidding for a new contract.
That has raised the possibility that New Mexico might lose out on between $25 million to $30 million annually in tax revenue, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill, since nonprofits don’t currently pay gross receipts
tax.
Local governments could also face a loss of funding.
CONTRACTING & ACQUISITIONLos Alamos County calls for flat budget in tense
times Los Alamos Monitor | January 26, 2018
County Manager Harry Burgess suggested to the Los Alamos County Council Tuesday they adopt a flat budget for fiscal year 2019, in light of the impending contract transition at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
With the New Mexico Legislature still not indicating any movement toward passing a bill this session to require non-profits to pay gross receipts taxes, Burgess recommended to council to consider a conservative approach with the budget, until they know more.
At present, with the management and operations contract being managed by the Los Alamos National
Security, a for-profit entity, the county, and the state receives millions of dollars in proceeds from the lab’s gross receipts taxes every year.
Lake Barrett: 20 Years Late but DOE Needs to Jumpstart Yucca Mountain and Consolidated Storage Nuclear Townhall | January 31, 2018
Twenty years ago today, as the Acting Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM), I had to
publicly admit that the Federal Government, specifically the DOE, could not meet its lawful contractual obligation to start to remove spent nuclear fuel from America’s nuclear reactors on January 31, 1998. Although ten billion plus dollars has been spent on science to demonstrate the safety of a proposed national repository at Yucca Mountain, petty election politicking is continuing to stop all progress on this critical environmental program.
So, today marks the 20th anniversary of the Department's failure to meet its contractual obligation to start removing spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. This has come at great cost as Federal taxpayer liabilities are approaching $30 billion. Moreover, approximately 86,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel and defense waste remains stranded at over 121 sites in 39 states albeit safely on our rivers, lakes and
seashores that are within 50 miles of over 150 million people.
|
|
|
|
