LAKEPORT— Members of Lake County’s business sector met with Congressman Mike Thompson in Lakeport Wednesday as part of his periodic visits to the district in a small business round table/town hall where they freely expressed their concerns over the chaotic business climate as a result of the current federal government administration.
“Issues and concerns seem to be the same throughout,” said Thompson. “it’s a very chaotic time right now as I think everyone knows. It’s more difficult to be bipartisan in Washington right now. It’s a very, very difficult time for everyone, hopefully we’ll be able to get beyond this and return Congress to the business of doing what is best for the country and for our individual districts. Everyone wants to know how to stop the chaos and how to get the train back on the tracks.”
Thompson said he was still working on legislation including all bills dealing with telemedicine which he started when he was in the state Senate. He said he continues to work on legislation that deals with mental health that would allow a tax credit for individual companies that invest in mental health research. “I am a firm believer that we do not have enough money to continue to treat the symptoms of mental health and we don’t do a very good job of that right now.”
He added that he spends a lot of time trying to figure out what can be done at the federal level about the issue of insurance. To that end, he co-sponsored bipartisan legislation dealing with insurance for people in fire prone areas which he expanded to include a 30 percent tax credit for bigger properties to do resilience and prevention work.
Thompson also spoke about and gave examples of members of Congress who may cave to the Trump Administration’s demands on various issues because of a fear of being primaried by the opposition. He said there was a letter signed by 12 House Republicans addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson in which they said if there were any cuts to the Medicaid budget that affects populations that are at risk, they would not vote for it, which he called a good start. “What that means in the end I don’t know, but what I do know is that Medicaid cuts devastate health care and the more rural you are, the worse it’s going to hit you. You start taking big chunks out of the health cut budget any place, it doesn’t really matter where the distribution of those funds are, when you take a bunch of money out, something has to give.”
He added that in District 4, he has been told by a number of providers, administrators and health care professionals that if this happens, they will have to close the doors and cut back services drastically. He said the percentage of Medicaid’s budget is one third in the entire state and it’s difficult to attract health care professionals to rural areas.
Business owners in attendance addressed a myriad of concerns and told Thompson that they had a different set of obstacles than many neighboring counties from a business standpoint due to topography, struggles with population density, in addition to recovering from a series of challenges over the past five years including the pandemic, inflation and now the potential of tariffs affecting business during the upcoming summer season, traditionally a lucrative time for businesses but which has not produced what some expected in previous years.
Thompson was critical of President Donald Trump’s flip-flopping on the nature of the tariffs which are causing instability and confusion among businesses.
Another topic addressed was the pattern in the County of losing mom and pops and small businesses. In Kelseyville for example, three businesses have been lost recently, some to utilities and issues with increasing PG&E rates.
“That’s an issue with communities across our district and across our state and country,” said Thompson, adding that there are a lot of things that can be done including improving the internet connectivity. “We saw that with my legislation on telemedicine, if you lived in an area where you had access to internet, you got better health care than somebody who didn’t have access.” He said the same holds true for education and there is a continuing fight to make sure that not only small business, but everyone in rural communities have access to good connectivity.
“One thing that I always heard is businesses want stability, they want continuity,” said Thompson. “Right now it’s extremely tough because of that chaos,” which he noted is affecting everything from wine not being sold in Canada to effects on labor across many sectors including hospitality, building industry labor.
“We need to stop the privatization of social security, that is a killer for everybody; We need to stop the $884 billion worth of cuts to healthcare through the country. That’s a killer,” said Thompson. “We need to reverse the firings of 108,000 V.A. employees so when veterans who are sadly in a suicidal state and they call the V.A. for help because we passed that COMPACT Act to give them help in the last Congress, there’s somebody there to answer the phone. That’s the battle right now. Don’t lose sight of the fact this is all about tax cuts. The 2017 tax cuts expired, this is about extending those tax cuts and growing those tax cuts.”
Many businesses also bemoaned the high rates levied by PG&E. A discussion ensued regarding the possibility of mitigating these costs with community microgrids. Thompson said there is one is Calistoga that is about to come online. PG&E recently announced that it’s awarding $43 million for nine new microgrids spread across Humboldt, Lake and Marin Counties. The Microgrid Incentive Program funds the development of community microgrids to support disadvantaged communities most vulnerable to outages.
According to a recent press release, the microgrids selected in the first wave of MIP funding are located throughout PG&E’s North Bay and North Coast region and comprise four projects in Humboldt County, three projects in Lake County, and two projects in Marin County. Four of the nine projects will serve tribal communities. The microgrids will serve as new energy resilience solutions in the event of broader electric grid outages for a total of nearly 9,000 customers including approximately 3,600 customers with Access and Functional Needs (including people with disabilities, older adults, children, limited English proficiency, and transportation disadvantaged.)
“I know a lot of the renewable energy tax provisions that I put in the Inflation Reduction Act paved the way for a lot more efficient generation delivery of electricity and that’s going to be a help.” He added that he meets with the utility representatives often to discuss possible solutions. Members of the Board of Supervisors in attendance including Jessica Pyska representing District 5, talked about the BOS’ direction to staff this week to request Sonoma Clean Power (a non investor, self-funded nonprofit utility) undertake an updated study on the feasibility of Lake County Joining the Community Choice Aggregator power plan program, as the County continues its exploration of a GeoZone.
The suggestion for a community grid that could service the community, as opposed to solar power, was floated by attendees who said it would be a far better solution because they would serve a lot more people than the incentives for putting solar on their house because they are not owners, they are renters. “I am all for helping you do that,” said Thompson.
According to the presentation to the Board at this week’s meeting, following a feasibility study and a 60-day review period, service would likely start by May 1, 2027.
