[Trees-executive] Winkel-Berns Meetings

[Jerry Landay]

FOR THE SOT EXCOMM ONLY AND NOT FOR FURTHER DISTRIBUTION:

 Members of your Executive Committee met separately on Monday (Mar. 19,
2001) with two local members of the State Legislature, Rick Winkel and Tom
Berns.  Purpose of the meeting was to express SOT's consternation and
disappointment over the refusal of a colleague, Rep. Dan Rutherford of
Bloomington/Normal, to include SOT in ongoing talks he is chairing to
preserve the principle of local control in any tree-management standards
issued later in the year by the ICC.

 The results of these two meetings were presumptively gratifying.  Both
officials expressed dismay with the strategy, tactics, and draft tariff of
Dynegy/IP,  Winkel agreed to intercede with Rutherford in an effort to
persuade him to seat John McMahon at the meeting of the interveners' group
in his office Wednesday, 3/21.  Results at this writing are not known.

 The apparent position of Berns and Winkel is that they favor, and will work
for, a strong local-control component in a counter-tariff proposal currently
being hammered out by Champaign and Urbana, and their arborists and their
lawyers.  They favor the reiteration in any counter-proposal that reassert
private property rights, including the sanctity of easements.  Tree
management would be carried out by pruning contractors hired by the cities.
Any appeals on tree-cutting would go before an independent authority, not
IP.  One sticking point is how the cost of any city standards more
tree-friendly than IP's would be fairly determined.

 Winkel stated the basic principles on which any counter-tariff's
tree-management language should be based: predictable, local, and
trustworthy.

 BUT -- he stressed that the outlook AT THIS POINT, doesn't look good.  The
inference is clear: SOT must stay active, determined, united, and its
presence known.

 Jerry M. Landay
 for Kyra Shair and Jim Beauchamp