Category: Community

WinnMed is pleased to welcome Jason Zack, M.D., FAAD, to the medical practice.  Dr. Zack is a board-certified Mayo Clinic Health System dermatologist who will provide full-time care in Decorah beginning June 2025.

Dr. Zack received his undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University and his Doctor of Medicine degree from Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland.  He completed his Transition Year Internship at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso, Texas and his residency in Dermatology through the San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium in San Antonio, Texas. He has since provided dermatology specialty care at the Grafenwoehr Army Health Clinic in Grafenwoehr, Germany and at General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Dr. Zack is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army and a Fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Dermatology is the medical specialty that focuses on the health of the skin, hair and nails. At WinnMed, Dr. Zack will provide dermatology care and services for patients of all ages. Common dermatology conditions may include:

• Acne
• Eczema
• Dermatitis
• Rosacea
• Dry or sensitive skin
• Nail problems
• Pigmentation disorders
• Rashes
• Warts
• Psoriasis
• Skin cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment

Dr. Zack says, “Our move to northeast Iowa will allow us to settle into a community and be close to my sister and brother-in-law and their family – both are physicians in the WinnMed Emergency department.  Through our visits, my family and I have come to appreciate all the area has to offer, from the amazing outdoor opportunities to the great schools.  We look forward to joining the Decorah community and getting to know the people of the area.”

Regarding his practice, Dr. Zack says, “The skin is the largest organ in the body and skin conditions and diseases can impact anyone. I plan to expand upon the skin services currently offered at WinnMed so patients of all ages can receive much of their care and services locally.” 

Working alongside Dr. Zack will be Dayna Soukup, PA-C. Dayna received her undergraduate degree from Wartburg College and a Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies from Des Moines University. She has provided focused skin care services at WinnMed since 2022.

To make an appointment for dermatology services with Dr. Jason Zack at WinnMed, call 563-382-2911 or request an appointment through MyChart.

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Written by Andrew Johnson, Executive Director, and James Martin-Schramm, Policy Analyst at Clean Energy Districts of Iowa
View the original article at cleanenergydistricts.org

“Know when to walk away … Know when to run.”

Kenny Rogers (and songwriter Don Schlitz) had it right – “every hand’s a winner, and every hand’s a loser.” The “secret to surviving” is knowing what to throw, what to keep, and most importantly, when to walk away.

Legislators beware: sixty plus years of nuclear ratepayer robbery (among other forms) is coming to an Iowa community near you, if you don’t re-write or walk away from the Governor’s omnibus energy bill.

The Governor says that her energy bill (HF 834 and SF 585) is a “forward-focused, all-of-the-above energy strategy” for Iowa.

The bill is an all-of-the-above strategy for sure: it is a suite of practices that all will lead to rising rates for Iowa households, businesses, farms, and communities, and empower rising profits for Alliant and MidAmerican monopolist executives and shareholders.

Legislators who choose to represent Iowa ratepayers and communities need to rewrite the bill, or walk away from it now.

Three major changes to the bill would help protect ratepayers from rent-seeking monopolists locking in a generation of rates rising faster than inflation.

1. Ensure ironclad transparency and participation rights by making Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) a contested docket.
2. Clearly disallow Advanced Cost Recovery (also termed Construction Work In Progress, or CWIP) for ALL monopoly utility investments.
3. Remove premium rates of return from Advanced Ratemaking Principle dockets, and ensure that the Rate of Return equals the Cost of Capital for ALL utility investments.

We use the cautionary tale of nuclear to illustrate these points, but they apply to all utility capital investments. They are the bare minimum required to rebalance the risk/benefit equation between Iowa ratepayers and monopoly utility executives and shareholders.

Nuclear Ratepayer Robbery Coming To Iowa?

The energy bill specifically encourages utilities to propose and regulators to approve new nuclear power generation plants in Iowa – even if the power is for export to other states, and paid for by Iowa ratepayers.

Nuclear may well play an increasingly important role in the clean energy future. But everyone in the industry knows that every new nuclear plant is going to be exorbitantly expensive for at least a decade, even before the massive cost overruns that have plagued recent projects.

This is attractive to the captains of Alliant and MidAmerican, because the more they spend, the more they make for their shareholders. Both companies are already drooling over the possibility of state-guaranteed, near-predatory rates of returns over 60-80 years on tens of billions in nuclear plant investments.

It is possible to go down a nuclear path with strong ratepayer protections, but this bill is not that path. In fact, we’ve been here before. In 2012, HF 561 would have encouraged nuclear in Iowa, awarded Advanced Cost Recovery, gutted regulator oversight in planning, and transferred almost all risk from utility investors to ratepayers. Thank goodness consumer protection groups like AARP kept that door closed.

What happened to Georgia ratepayers should give pause to legislators trying to open it again. The only new nuclear plant to be built this century is the Vogtle Plant, which shows us what nuclear ratepayer robbery looks like:

• Approved by regulators in 2009, the two Vogtle nuclear reactors were scheduled to be operational by 2017, at a nearly unimaginable cost of $14 billion.
• After endless cost overruns, construction failures, and contractor bankruptcies, the first reactor powered up in 2023 and the second in 2024, at a combined cost of at least $35 billion.
• Georgia Power ratepayers have been paying for the plant on their bills since 2011, and in fact most had paid over $1,000 to the utility before ever receiving a single kilowatt hour of electricity.
• Ratepayers shouldered most of the risk of massive cost overruns, and are now forced to buy some of the most expensive electricity in the country for the next 60-80 years.

The current energy bill could well bring this story to Iowa.

Thou Shalt Protect Ratepayers

Many say the monopoly investor-owned utilities are already too big to regulate. Their armies of financial and legal experts out-resource the regulators, and their lobbying money captures the political process (as in, the bill we’re talking about).

If Iowa legislators want to protect ratepayers rather than facilitate shareholder entitlement, they would do well to remember that God didn’t tell Moses, “Please be nice and don’t take each other’s things.” No, he (or she) laid down the law, and said, “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”

Tweaking the current bill is like a mosquito bite on Goliath. Legislators need to lay down a law that tells regulators, “Thou Shalt Protect Ratepayers,” and give them tools to do so.

Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) can be a meaningful process that helps create a strong electric grid while keeping rates down by ensuring ratepayers only pay for what they really need. Or, it can be an inside job of rigging the system to guarantee high profits to company shareholders, at the expense of ratepayers, as happened in Georgia.

The Governor’s bill gives away the farm. It allows the monopoly utilities to develop IRPs based on “management judgement,” and requires only a “good faith effort” to consider input from ratepayers, stakeholders, the Consumer Advocate, and the Utilities Commission.

To avoid opening the door to endless ratepayer taxation without representation, legislators need to establish the IRP process as a contested docket, and to provide additional ratepayer rights and protections.

Advanced Cost Recovery, also known as Construction Work in Progress, or CWIP, allowed Georgia Power to force ratepayers to pay for the nuclear boondoggle for over a decade before they saw any benefit. CWIP directly contradicts the long-standing best practice in ratemaking that utility assets must be “used and useful” before costs are included in rates.

CWIP isn’t only a concern for nuclear investments. MidAmerican Energy has just submitted an Advanced Ratemaking Principles docket application for 800 MW of solar, which includes a requested 11.25% return on equity for the project as a whole, and what looks very much like a 10% effective return on equity during CWIP.

In analyzing HF 561 in 2011, Iowa Utilities Board staff warned that the bill “would shift nearly all of the construction, licensing, and permitting risk associated with one or more nuclear plants from the company to its customers”, and “could create incentives for the company to engage in behavior that could be contrary to the public interest in certain situations.”

Whether solar or nuclear or other investments are a good deal for ratepayers should be decided in a robust IRP process, and shareholders must shoulder risks together with ratepayers. Regardless of the investment, ratepayers should not be funding shareholder returns prior to receiving the benefits of utility investments, and legislators should enshrine this principle in the current energy bill.

Finally, serious legislators should also address the biggest elephant in the room when it comes to 50 years of increasing monopoly utility profiteering on the backs of ratepayers: highway robbery levels of Return on Equity (ROE).

Warren Buffet is indeed a genius … to a large degree because he is a monopolist. His MidAmerican Energy and counterpart Alliant Energy have been feeding from the trough of regulator-approved ROE levels with no connection to risk level or rate fairness for decades.

The regulatory compact inherent in the state granting monopoly service territories and captive customers to private companies is built on a fundamental principle: that the Rate of Return (ROR) on utility investments should equal the Cost of Capital (COC) invested by shareholders.

Unreasonably high ROEs are draining tens of millions of dollars per year from Iowa ratepayers and communities. Legislators should enshrine the principle that utility Rate of Return = Cost of Capital, and clearly direct regulators to implement the principle in all ratemaking rules and dockets.

These ratemaking reforms are all important, because rate regulation is a bit like whack-a-mole: if the regulatory framework is weak and incomplete, the utilities will find the loopholes and continue to enrich shareholders at the expense of ratepayers and communities, because that is their job.

Ensure Ratepayers Are Winners, Or Walk Away

Well over a million Iowa ratepayers are captive customers of the state’s two monopoly investor-owned electric utilities, Alliant and MidAmerican.

The state creates tremendous moral hazard in granting those exclusive monopolies, which are not subject to competitive market forces.

In exchange, the state owes ratepayers and non-utility stakeholders ironclad protections against rent-seeking behavior, and a powerful seat at the table of rate regulation.

Despite the best intentions of well-informed legislators, the current energy bill fails on both counts. Legislators are gambling with the future of Iowa ratepayers and communities.

It’s a tall order, but the legislators hold the cards to dramatically improve the bill. Barring that, they should walk away sooner rather than later.

–

Andrew Johnson is Executive Director of the Clean Energy Districts of Iowa, and a family farmer in Winneshiek County.

James Martin-Schramm is Senior Policy Analyst for the Clean Energy Districts of Iowa and led the “CEDI Coalition” that included 50 Alliant-served communities in the recent Alliant rate increase docket, RPU-2023-0002.

 

Do you have a question about home energy efficiency, renewable energy, or local energy initiatives? Maybe there’s something that’s always been confusing, or unclear to you? Or a resource that’s hard to find?

Submit your clean energy questions to the Winneshiek Energy District. Questions will be addressed in upcoming newsletters an on our blog.

Paul Cutting, Energy Planner

If you’ve been following the national news about electric vehicles (EVs) lately, you might think things are quite dire. There’s concern of the Trump administration’s attempts to eliminate funding for the buildout of a national charging network, fear that tax credits will be eliminated, slowing sales amongst certain manufacturers, and eye-popping used vehicle depreciation. 

But the reality is far less bleak, if not outright positive. The EV tax credits for both new and used vehicles remain in place, at least for now, industry wide EV sales continue to grow, and more affordable models with better range and charging capabilities are coming to market every month. For those of you considering an EV, 2025 could be the best time yet to make the switch.

Federal tax credits for both new and used vehicles remain in place. And to displace any concern of whether the tax credits will still be there when you file your taxes next spring, all credits can now be taken as a point of sale reduction in vehicle purchase price. Tax credit availability varies by vehicle model, and are pegged to manufacturing and battery sourcing rules, but many models qualify for between $3,750 and $7,500 in rebates. In many cases, leasing is an even better deal, as the full $7,500 credit applies to all models, regardless of manufacturing and battery sourcing requirements. Many manufacturers are also offering special financing rates and additional cash-back incentives, that coupled together, make leasing more appealing than outright ownership. These incentives make EVs far more competitive with gas-powered cars than sticker prices alone might suggest.

Affordability is improving in another key way— new, mass-market EVs are finally coming to market. The Kia EV3, an affordable small SUV with solid range, underpinned by the Hyundai Electric- Global Modular Platform with its ultra-fast charging capabilities, is expected later this year. Chevrolet is bringing back the Bolt, a budget-friendly option that was one of the best-selling EVs before its temporary discontinuation in 2023. Rivian’s upcoming R2 aims to offer adventure-ready, up-market electric driving at a more accessible price point. Ford has stated that its strategy going forward is small, mass-market EVs, built as both SUVs and small trucks. Other automakers, including Volkswagen and Nissan, have also hinted at lower-cost models in development. 2025 will be the year major manufacturers switch from niche, high-end models to mass market offerings.

Charging has long been a sticking point for potential EV buyers, but that’s changing too. A growing number of manufacturers, including Ford, GM, Kia, Hyundai, Rivian, Nissan, Volvo and others, now have access to Tesla’s extensive Supercharger network. This expansion will significantly increase fast charging options, while reducing range anxiety and making road trips easier. And fast charging is increasingly being rolled out in rural areas like northeast Iowa, as evidenced by 150+ kW chargers being installed at area auto dealers, and the buildout of fast charging regionally at chains like Caseys, Kum & Go, HyVee and Walmart.

While the transition to electric isn’t without its challenges, the overall trend remains unchanged—EVs are getting cheaper, more affordable and easier to charge. The doom-and-gloom doesn’t tell the whole story, and the EV transition continues to roll on.