A California county treasurer known for innovative financings is retiring

Placer County, California, has been a leader in creating public finance solutions.

Much of that, according to public finance professionals and county leaders, can be attributed to one person: Jenine Windeshausen, the county’s long-serving treasurer-tax collector, who is retiring at year-end.

“Jenine gained a reputation for bringing creative financial solutions, and innovative entrepreneurial programs and services to the residents of Placer County,” according to a resolution adopted by the county Board of Supervisors commending her for her service.

Windeshausen departs on Dec. 31 after 29 years as treasurer-tax collector. Tristan Butcher, who has been working in the treasurer-tax collector’s officer for nine years, ran unopposed in the election to replace her.

“Jenine has really had a storied career,” said Eric McKean, a managing director with underwriter Ramirez & Co. “She has financed a lot of different, unique programs.”

Though the treasurer-tax collector has many other duties, including managing the county’s investment portfolio, Windeshausen said that creating methods of tapping debt to further projects and save the county money was her favorite.

“I really love the bond work, and I have had lots of opportunities to do bond work,” Windeshausen said. “As a treasurer for a multiplicity of jurisdictions, I was able to work on bonds for different entities.”

She has issued revenue bonds, tobacco bonds, lease revenue bonds, bonds to finance equipment purchases and financing for a school district that wanted to build a gym.

She was among the first to create financing for a community choice electricity aggregator, and developed a financing structure that allowed the Placer County Water Authority to gain more control of electricity generated by water from its reservoirs.

Windeshausen counts the Middle Fork Project Financing Authority deals among her highlights.

She with state lawmakers and the county supervisors created a joint powers authority so the county water authority could move away from an electricity purchase contract it had with investor-owned utility PG&E.

This involved crafting the financing structure for the 244-megawatt American River Middle Fork Hydroelectric Project’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission relicensing costs and capital improvements.

“The contract with PG&E had a line that said the utility had to approve the sale of energy and expenditures,” Windeshausen said. “When I looked at the deal, I saw that the water agency owned the project and had control of it, but the board of supervisors had control of revenues and expenditures, so who is going to lend money on that?”

She set up a joint powers authority that put both ownership and control of revenues and expenditures in the hands of the JPA.

“The JPA meant they could issue bonds, and then I brought in bond counsel to draft the bonds and the bond purchase agreement,” Windeshausen said. “It was about three years to negotiate the JPA, and do all of the analysis for risk management of the bonds.”

When the authority was created in 2006, she decided issuing bonds, when the project wouldn’t have revenue for 10 years, wouldn’t work because investors would want capitalized interest for 10 years. Instead, she structured a draw down bond that worked like a line of credit, but wasn’t a revolving line of credit, meaning the JPA couldn’t draw down on it, and then borrow again after it was repaid. It could draw down to a certain amount, and then would pay interest on that amount.

In 2020, she refunded the authority’s debt into fixed rate debt.

“If I hadn’t structured it the way I did, they would have paid $30 million more,” Windeshausen said. “Then they refinanced it at the end, and saved even more money.”

After the PG&E power purchase contract ended at the end of 2017, the water authority has sold power it generates directly into California energy market.

Windeshausen says she hadthe best of both worlds with a job working in municipal finance and a home in an area renowned for its recreational opportunities.

Placer County sweeps more than 120 miles east from Sacramento suburbia through Sierra Nevada mountain peaks to the Nevada border. It’s added 150,000 residents in 20 years to top 400,000 in population.

Her job enabled her to live in a rural area, drive 10 miles down a country road to work in Auburn, and then “sit at a desk, turn on the computer, and work in municipal finance, so I am basically doing a Wall Street job… I am really fortunate and blessed to have had this set of circumstances.”

She says she fell in love with Loomis, where she lives, during a family visit when she was 11.

“We used to visit family friends who had a daughter my age,” Windeshausen said. “We used to ride the horse to the country store, tie the horse to a post and go in and get some candy and a soft drink. I fell in love with the rural landscape and being able to have animals.”

At her home she has three horses, a goat, a half-dozen chickens, a cat, a whitefish pond and two dogs.

She started with Placer County on July 27, 1987, as the treasurer-tax collector’s first investment officer, and was appointed to treasurer-tax collector by the board of supervisors in 1993. After serving out her predecessor’s term she was elected to the position, and then re-elected six more times.

She has “led every issuance of debt for Placer County since 1987, including capital projects for the Larry Oddo Finance and Administration Building, the Community Development Resource Agency Building, the South Placer Justice Center, the Auburn Justice Center and the Health and Human Services Building,” the county’s resolution says.

The county holds an Aa1 issuer rating from Moody’s Investors Service that has no outlook attached. It holds an AA-plus rating from S&P Global Ratings with a stable outlook.

Recently, she led the charge when the Western Placer Waste Management Authority returned to the market with $97 million of tax exempt solid waste revenue bonds after a 30-year hiatus. S&P Global Ratings assigned its AA rating to the deal.

The Placer County Public Financing Authority won a 2018 Bond Buyer Non-Traditional Financing Deal of the Year award for $39.8 million of taxable revenue refunding green bonds to fund a Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, program.

With the support of the Board of Supervisors, she “developed, proposed, implemented and administered the mPOWER PACE Program, which provided over $110 million in financing for energy efficiency and distributed electric generation for residential and commercial property owners in Placer and Nevada counties and the City of Folsom,” according to the county resolution.

“Jenine created the mPOWER program at the county. It was her brainchild,” McKean said. “It was this incredible economic development tool for the residents of the county, and it also had a lot of environmental benefits.”

McKean was lead banker of the Placer County mPOWER bond deal while he was at Stifel. He moved over to Ramirez in August.

In her remarks at Deal of the Year ceremony, Windeshausen said she was gratified that “there is a public finance solution for PACE programs that state and local governments can operate with the highest consumer protection standards and the lowest costs, thereby producing greater consumer financial and energy savings.”

The mPOWER bonds were among the first to securitize PACE tax liens and take them out using a municipal bond program.

Windeshausen not only helped create Placer County’s PACE program that allows property owners to use a tax lien to back energy improvement loans, she said she also worked with state lawmakers to codify laws that prevent investors from taking advantage of small business owners and homeowners.

She also has been instrumental in a whole host of programs involving community financing district bonds and clean energy programs, including Pioneer Community Energy, the county’s Community Choice Aggregation joint powers authority,” which allows customers to purchase energy directly from the agency, bypassing PG&E.

Windeshausen served as its executive director from 2017 to 2020, during which time she managed a 1,125-gigawatt energy portfolio, saving the electric rate payers in Placer County, Rocklin, Lincoln, Auburn and Colfax over $20 million in electricity costs, the county says.

“I feel fortunate to have had challenging and interesting opportunities,” said Windeshausen, who will turn 63 three days before she retires. “I wanted to retire while I am still young enough to do the things I love to do.”

That has included doing endurance rides of 50 miles on horseback. She plans to travel, see the national parks and continue to train her two dogs to prepare them for dog shows.

“I want to do a lot of traveling,” Windeshausen said. “For the past 12 years or so, I haven’t been able to take a vacation without making sure I have Wi-Fi access, because a lot of bond deals get done in the summer.”