Boyd gains OK for NV Energy exit

PUC decides on $10.7M impact fee for company

Boyd Gaming Corp. was approved Wednesday to power its 10 Las Vegas-area casinos with a provider other than NV Energy.

The Public Utilities Commission of Nevada determined Boyd would have to pay a $10.7 million impact fee if the company follows through with the departure. The PUC and NV Energy seek impact fees because they contend that departures from the monopoly place increased costs on remaining customers.

When calculating the impact fee, the commission included Boyd’s plans to expand the Fremont hotel-casino “to protect remaining ratepayers and the public interest.”

“The Fremont Hotel project has received all of the necessary local approvals and needs only final board approval,” the commission said in its PUC filing.

Boyd spokesman David Strow said the company had no comment on the approval but offered some information about the Fremont expansion.

“We have some land at the Fremont that is available for development, and over the years we’ve periodically looked at options for developing

four years before starting to decline. The CBO is forecasting that the deficits will top $1 trillion beginning in 2022 and will remain above $1 trillion annually through 2029.

The big increase in deficits is coming after President Donald Trump’s pushed a $1.5 trillion tax cut through Congress in 2017. Congress then approved increases in spending for the military and domestic programs starting in 2018.

Spending this year totals

$3.01 trillion, up 9.3 percent from the same period in 2018, while government receipts total $2.27 trillion, an increase of 2.3 percent.

Interest on the $22 trillion national debt is one of the fastest-growing parts of the budget with net interest payments totaling $268.3 billion, up 15.6 percent from a year ago. That reflects the fact that interest rates have risen and there is now more debt to finance.

Tariff payments to the U.S. Treasury this year total $46 billion, up 80 percent from a year ago. That reflects the higher tariffs Trump has imposed on China and other nations as part of his effort to strike

better trade deals.

On May 10, Trump boosted the tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent after talks between the two nations on a trade deal sought by Trump broke off.

Trump has said that if an agreement is not reached, he is prepared to expand the penalty tariffs to another $300 billion in Chinese products.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet at a Group of 20 economic summit at the end of this month with hopes the two nations can make progress on restarting the talks then.