Editor:
Washington’s infrastructure is in dire shape. The Department of Transportation has said that Washington’s highways are in the “early stages of failure,” ferries are outdated and subject to frequent breakdowns, stranding travelers for hours, and there is an anticipated $900 million annual shortfall by the 2027-2029 biennium, due to a lack of federal funding.
Meanwhile, projections show that nearly $4 billion in revenue would be generated through 2029 under the Climate Commitment Act’s “cap and invest” system. This system measures greenhouse gas pollution emitted by industry and charges penalties accordingly. Revenue from the CCA would help cover modernization and electrification of our ferry fleet, improvements to our state highways, and would help keep public transit running smoothly across the Evergreen State.
Ballot initiative 2117 would repeal Washington’s Cap and Invest program and would therefore make our transportation systems dirtier, less safe and economically regressive. Instead of electrifying our ferries, we would have to rely on our current aging, unreliable, and dirty diesel fleet. The gas tax would have to go up. Instead of having wealthy corporations improve our roads, individuals already paying the fourth-highest gas tax in America would be forced to fund such improvements.
Any way you slice it, poor and middle-class Washingtonians would pay for infrastructure upkeep, while others would line their own pockets. It is past time for everyone to pay their fair share and for ordinary Washingtonians to get financial relief. Vote no on I-2117.
Elliot Hazzard
Edmonds
The CCA doesn’t allow money generated to be spent on roads.
The CCA is being used to cover needed ferry and school bus replacement. That frees up funds for roads and bridges. We don’t have an income tax. Our elected officials have to do the best they can with poor funding.
Not even true; the State has never had so much money. The ferry issue is a ruse and an Inslee fetish (and a desire for a legacy). The State’s ferry system uses at most 2% of the State govt’s diesel usage – hardly moving the emissions dial. The ferry system is in its present state due to Inslee’s mismanagement over 12 years – no other reason.
A major component of the CCA is funding improvements to sidewalks and crosswalks across some of our state’s busiest roads. These improvements will help children safely get to school.
Do you REALLY think wealthy Corporations will pay? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Not one cent, without passing cost on to the supplier who then passes it on, eventually the tax payer, already loaded down gets hit! No matter what anyone does or how they do it, city, county, state it is STILL the ordinary every day tax payer that pays it, NO big Corp.that passes it on, or wealthy person that has the accounting or legal expertise to skirt it. And these added blind costs, like all tax increases NEVER go down or end, once in effect, and its NEVER enough!
Ms. Holtrop,
I think I get what you’re saying.
The supporters of initiative 2117 tell us that, when costs are lowered for oil companies, those oil companies (out of the goodness of their hearts) will pass those savings on to the customer and our gas prices will go down. Actually gas prices will not go down, because oil companies are not run on the goodness of their hearts.
So far, oil companies have paid about $6 billion to Washington State to support programs to improve our air and water and to make it easier for Washington State to stop releasing global warming pollution. That $6 billion is in the bank. It’s been paid. Oil companies pay the fees that governments charge them. We know that, because they have been paying all year and all last year.
The inception of the CCA has resulted in Washington gasoline prices increasing by 30-50 cents, with increased bills for home heating fuels (natural gas and oil) and for a wide variety of essentials. These increased costs are very regressive: they hurt low-income folks the most since energy costs are a far larger portion of their income. Low-income folks often can’t afford expensive electric cars or live in places with convenient chargers.
The Washington Policy Center estimates that the CCA costs the average Washingtonian about $ 500-1000 a year.
So, the CCA assures equity now? No, it does not. The State makes more on retail refined petroleum sales than do the refiners – regressive taxation. Refiner’s profits are less by percentage than the major techs such Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others. The state’s road system is a perpetual jobs regime that is supposed to be funded by gas taxes and supplemental budgets (deemed more than satisfactory by the appropriators). Reflecting on what has been spent and where, have you considered that it took almost 60 years to complete the I-5 Tacoma corner? Good planning and design? The key point to consider with the CCA is that it has no metrics to measure the efficacy of its spending, no baseline or tools to mesasure impact. Electric ferries are fine in some circumstances, especially if the state oil company is paying for them as is the case in Norway (Norway’s state oil company is Statoil, now named Equinor (no allusion to the source of the money). This state’s ferry system uses no more than 2% of the state government’s diesel consumption. The ferry system is failing after 12 years of Inslee mismanagement, nothing more. Lastly, the CCA’s “carbon market” isn’t that – all the state had to do was copy California’s well-established market, but it didn’t.
While I’m somewhat sympathetic to these Initiatives, I plan to vote no on all of them as I think passing them will create more chaos and harm than living with the taxes, as flawed as they are. I’m a little suspicious about the real motivations for some of the developers of the Initiatives. Washington State is a regressive tax state by design considering the prohibition on any sort of progressive income tax and the only way to avoid that is to move to an income tax state. We can’t tax the poor much because, by definition, they don’t have much money and we can’t tax the rich because they are the job creators (in theory anyway); so what is left is taxing things like carbon pollution creation and the dirt we live on to get the services we want and need, like a functional state ferry system and virtually free EMS for the select groups that use them the most. A ferry ride that really costs about $150+/per gets charged $25 and a trip to the ER that really costs $1200+/per gets charged at $0 to $500 with Insurance usually paying. It’s time to look at some more honest user fees I think.
It seems everyone in Washington who complains about sales or property taxes conveniently forgets about the lack of income taxes. If Washington had a more transparent and equitable tax system much of the arguments would be unnecessary and we could discuss our common concerns with more logic and community.
WA has a B&O tax…I believe we are the only state in the country with such a ruthlessly regressive tax on small business. It’s charged on gross receipts regardless of profits. Only the mega corps with lobbyists are exempt. Many small business owners consider the B&O tax to be worse than a state income tax.
WA tax receipts grow higher every year. There is no shortage of money coming in at the state level. Back when this carbon tax bill was passed the state said they did not expect these billions if dollars of increased revenue. It’s like found money, the state budget was plenty high before these billions were added to it.
New Mexico and Hawaii have some form of gross receipts tax, too.
Some years ago when Bill Gates Sr. (the lawyer; not the insanely rich guy son) tried to promote a progressive income tax change in our state constitution he got shot down in no uncertain terms. The only reason I voted against his proposal is because I know this state will never give up it’s beloved regressive sales tax. If it was one or the other I would have voted for it, especially when the average guy could use state income taxes as a federal deduction. Trump took care of that with his phony tax cut for all by raising the standard deduction a little and giving rich folks and corporations an huge tax break. I think the tax break for the average guy sunsets soon, if I’m not mistaken. Nothing ever really changes when it comes to tax favoritism toward the rich. They make the laws you know.
Supporting the CCA means supporting a state program that the Dept. of Ecology admits has no measurable results. And why are there no results? Because the state didn’t develop a way to assess its results! The CCA is based on political wishful thinking under the guise of environmental progress. Since Washingtonians deserve programs that are assessed to truly work, passing Initiative 2117 may lead to such programs.
How is the cap and invest program not regressive? As a company pays more for carbon credits, they will raise the cost of their product. For example, if a direct tax on the sale of gasoline is regressive, then isn’t a program that raises the price of gasoline by “taxing” oil companies who pass it on to consumers a regressive program?
Good question. The cap-and-invest program (the Climate Commitment Act) raises funds to support low income families (with a pretty high qualification cut off) who face additional costs due to the carbon fees. What funding it provides will be adjusted for decades to come as different situations arise. This year, the additional costs related to higher natural gas prices were balanced by payments to households who still use natural gas. This support did not remove the caps on how much in greenhouse gases natural gas companies could release, and there is still an incentive to natural gas companies to reduce their greenhouse gases, but the additional costs that you describe were covered.