$295 million in property tax relief...

Large scale sunflower farming in North Dakota

 ... for taxpayers in North Dakota, that is, thanks to shale energy development.  In a report entitled "go north, young man", the Washington Examiner tells us:

North Dakota’s oil boom has already increased the sparsely settled state’s population by 5 percent, and the director of the state’s Mineral Resources Department predicts that 2,000 new wells (there are now 166 active ones) will be drilled in 2011. Half will be located in a 70-mile radius around Williston, which had to add 1,200 new housing units this year to keep up with demand.

But the state is also looking to the future.

In November, 63 percent of North Dakota voters wisely approved a measure that funnels 30 percent of all oil tax revenues, now at $613 million annually, into a Legacy Fund which cannot be touched until July 1, 2017, at which time it is expected to be about $2 billion and generate $60 million in interest annually for the state's general fund. 

But only interest earned by the fund can be spent by the state. An emergency provision to allocate up to 15 percent of the principle per biennium requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature to ensure that revenues will outlast the oil.

Even as Finger Lakes households open their staggering January tax bills, our self-anointed elites are working overtime to ensure nobody in Central New York ever benefits from any type of boom, energy or otherwise.