This morning, we reported that the Senate budget leaves out one of the most high profile taxes being floated in Olympia this session—one that the Governor included in her budget: Tripling the hazardous substance tax—a voter-approved tax that pays for storm water cleanup.
The environmentalists advocating for increasing the tax—which falls mostly on big oil—thought they’d sweetened the idea by allowing the majority of the money to go to the general fund for several years before earmarking it back solely for storm water cleanup. It would bring in about $225 million a year. The state is facing a $2.8 billion shortfall this year and legislators are testing their wits over cuts and new taxes.
Environmentalists thought they had a good bet with the hazardous substance tax. But oil industry lobbyists reprotedly put the full court press on the Senate in recent days.
Dave Fisher a spokesman with the Stop Washington’s Hidden Gas Tax Coalition (a group that includes the oil indsustry) says, “We’re glad the Senate heard our message about how this would increase prices at the pump and how this would cost us jobs.” He says—given that the tax is still in the governor’s budget—they will continue to press the issue until the session is over.
“We’re not deterred,” says environmental lobbyist Cliff Traisman.
“We are still in the game. It’s in the governor’s budget, the Senate Majority Leader [Sen. Lisa Brown] says she’s committed to the idea and so does the Speaker of the House [Rep. Frank Chopp.] Who else can say they’ve got the governor, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Speaker supporting their tax?”
Traisman says environmentalists just have to “target” a few key legislators on the Senate side.
The tax, however, isn’t in the House budget (yet) either. The House released its budget shortly after the Senate today, but they do not specify any new taxes, saying only that they are looking for $857 million in new revenue.
Today’s budget news is certainly a mixed bag for environmental advocates. This morning’s Morning Fizz laid out the Good News/Bad News equation:
2. There’s some good news and some bad news for environmentalists coming today in the state Senate’s budget proposal.
Good news first: Kirkland-area Sen. Eric Oemig’s (D-45) bill to end a $4 million a year tax break for TransAlta’s Centralia coal plant—the biggest greenhouse gas culprit in the state—is included in the Senate proposal. The bad news: The budget includes a proposal to shelf tax incentives for renewable engergy.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Traisman said about the Senate’s decision to cut the renewable energy tax breaks—worth about $7.8 million according to the Senate. Traisman points out that getting rid of the incentives actaully kills “substantial” revenues from the jobs associated with “huge renewable energy projects in the rural part of the state.”
As for the news about TransAlta, Sierra Club leader Doug Howell issued a glowing statement:
“We applaud the leadership of Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown and Senator Eric Oemig, for including this reasonable solution to an economic injustice in the consolidated package of bills that will end corporate tax loopholes,” he said. “As Washington faces the biggest financial crisis in state history, it is unconscionable to think that our state’s most harmful polluter should be allowed to continue receiving tax breaks.”
