Washington State Democratic Party takes position opposing CarbonWA’s I‑732

Yes­ter­day, dur­ing the mid­dle day of its 2016 win­ter meet­ing, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty went on record as opposed to Car­bon­WA’s I‑732, join­ing the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil and IAM’s Dis­trict Lodge 751 in the no camp. I‑732 is a com­plex tax swap pro­pos­al that would levy a car­bon tax while also reduc­ing sales and busi­ness & occu­pa­tion taxes.

Car­bon­WA and oth­er I‑732 pro­po­nents con­tend that their tax swap is “rev­enue neu­tral” (mean­ing it would not increase or decrease state rev­enue). Non­par­ti­san leg­isla­tive staff and the Depart­ment of Rev­enue don’t agree. Accord­ing to DOR’s cal­cu­la­tions, I‑732 would reduce rev­enue by near­ly $1 bil­lion over the next four years. (That’s bil­lion, with a b.) Car­bon­WA insists DOR’s analy­sis is erro­neous, and that the ini­tia­tive would ulti­mate­ly be “approx­i­mate­ly rev­enue neu­tral”.

But the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has decid­ed it does­n’t want to take a chance on I‑732 and has for­mal­ly come out against the measure.

The par­ty’s State Cen­tral Com­mit­tee, the WSDCC, con­sid­ered duel­ing res­o­lu­tions on the ini­tia­tive this week­end. One was to take a posi­tion in sup­port of I‑732, and the oth­er was to take a posi­tion in oppo­si­tion. The lat­ter received a “do pass” rec­om­men­da­tion from the WSD­C­C’s Res­o­lu­tions Com­mit­tee and was sub­se­quent­ly adopt­ed, while the for­mer got a “no pass” rec­om­men­da­tion and was rejected.

The WSD­C­C’s Res­o­lu­tions Com­mit­tee has the unen­vi­able task of vet­ting and word­smithing res­o­lu­tions that go before the full Cen­tral Com­mit­tee at its five reg­u­lar meet­ings dur­ing each two-year cycle. (Full dis­clo­sure: I sit on the WSDCC as a vot­ing mem­ber, but I am not on the WSD­C­C’s Res­o­lu­tions Committee.)

The Com­mit­tee heard from speak­ers in sup­port of and oppo­si­tion to I‑732 pri­or to reach­ing its deci­sion. In the end, the com­mit­tee vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly for the res­o­lu­tion to take a posi­tion oppos­ing I‑732, a rec­om­men­da­tion that was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly adopt­ed by the full WSDCC a few hours later.

The There­fore, be it resolved claus­es of the res­o­lu­tion state:

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty go on record oppos­ing I‑732, and […] in sup­port of a com­pre­hen­sive pol­i­cy to reduce car­bon emis­sions and GHGs that cre­ates a descend­ing cap on emis­sions, prices car­bon with the flex­i­bil­i­ty need­ed to pre­vent com­pa­nies from whole­sale leav­ing the state while at the same time help­ing them to become as car­bon effi­cient as pos­si­ble, pro­vides equi­ty to fos­sil fuel work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, invests in cli­mate adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion and lever­ages an accel­er­at­ed devel­op­ment of the new clean ener­gy econ­o­my; and

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty will work with labor, envi­ron­ment, com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, faith, pub­lic health and pro­gres­sive busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions to edu­cate and orga­nize around a com­pre­hen­sive car­bon and GHG reduc­tion pol­i­cy that can be intro­duced to the state leg­is­la­ture or to the bal­lot at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble opportunity.

We have out­lined our own objec­tions to I‑732 here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate on a num­ber of occa­sions, notably last Sep­tem­ber, when we pub­lished this post by our Pres­i­dent, Robert Cruick­shank. We felt I‑732 was fatal­ly flawed even before the state pub­lished its analy­sis con­clud­ing that I‑732 was actu­al­ly rev­enue negative.

Whether the ini­tia­tive is rev­enue neg­a­tive or not, we think it’s poor­ly writ­ten. We do appre­ci­ate that pro­po­nents of I‑732 are well-inten­tioned peo­ple who want to take action to address the cli­mate cri­sis. How­ev­er, we can­not sup­port their approach.

Per­plex­ing­ly, Car­bon­WA con­tin­ues to try to sell I‑732 to peo­ple by talk­ing about fol­low­ing the “lead” of British Colum­bia, which is cur­rent­ly gov­erned by one of the biggest groups of green­wash­ers in his­to­ry: Christy Clark’s B.C. Lib­er­als, who seem­ing­ly haven’t met a pipeline or fos­sil fuel ter­mi­nal project they did­n’t like.

British Colum­bia adopt­ed a car­bon tax years ago, but it has not been suc­cess­ful in keep­ing the province’s emis­sions in check.

In fact, British Columbi­a’s emis­sions have been going up, not down.

Lead­ers of Car­bon­WA have described sup­port for their ini­tia­tive as “bipar­ti­san” and have said they craft­ed the ini­tia­tive to appeal to vot­ers across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum, but Car­bon­WA’s endorse­ments page does­n’t list a sin­gle orga­ni­za­tion affil­i­at­ed with the Repub­li­can Par­ty or active in the con­ser­v­a­tive movement.

And, as even Car­bon­WA has admit­ted, polling sug­gests right-lean­ing vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton are incred­i­bly hos­tile to the idea of levy­ing a car­bon tax.

To have even a prayer of win­ning, Car­bon­WA would need pro­gres­sives and Democ­rats every­where to unite behind I‑732. But that is not hap­pen­ing, part­ly because Car­bon­WA’s pro­pos­al is poor­ly writ­ten, and part­ly because Car­bon­WA has been need­less­ly alien­at­ing pro­gres­sives with ridicu­lous com­men­tary like this:

[Yoram Bau­man] is an envi­ron­men­tal econ­o­mist and stand-up come­di­an (yes, an unusu­al com­bo). He is also one of the lead­ers of the effort in Wash­ing­ton State to pass a car­bon tax. He has been work­ing tire­less­ly to build support.

Based on his expe­ri­ences, he has a mes­sage for envi­ron­men­tal activists: “I am increas­ing­ly con­vinced that the path to cli­mate action is through the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Yes, there are chal­lenges on the right — skep­ti­cism about cli­mate sci­ence and about tax reform — but those are sur­mount­able with time and effort. The same can­not be said of the chal­lenges on the left: an unyield­ing desire to tie every­thing to big­ger gov­ern­ment, and a will­ing­ness to use race and class as polit­i­cal weapons in order to pur­sue that desire.”

Yoram Bau­man is a fun­ny guy, but this time he is not joking.

If you’re won­der­ing how Car­bon­WA’s efforts to reach out to Repub­li­cans are going, the answer is not well. As I men­tioned already, they haven’t scored any endorse­ments from groups on the right. Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors, mean­while, have been open­ly dis­dain­ful of I‑732 when asked about it by the press.

Doug Erick­sen, who is a very good friend of Tim Eyman and all the oil com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the state, trash­es I‑732 every chance he gets. For instance, here’s a KING5 sto­ry from last month about Car­bon­WA’s sub­mis­sion of sig­na­tures:

Sen. Doug Erick­sen, R‑Ferndale, con­sid­ers the ini­tia­tive an ener­gy tax instead of a car­bon tax.

Erick­sen chairs the Sen­ate’s ener­gy committee.

He said the move would cause high­er home heat­ing bills and gas prices.

Bau­man did his cause no favors when he agreed with Erick­sen that gas prices would go up — even vol­un­teer­ing a fig­ure! Here’s the next two lines of the story:

Bau­man said the ini­tia­tive could end up rais­ing gas prices 25 cents a gallon.

Erick­sen also thinks the ini­tia­tive could end up hurt­ing the envi­ron­ment by encour­ag­ing Wash­ing­ton busi­ness­es to relo­cate over­seas in search of less restric­tive pol­lu­tion laws.

Yoram Bau­man’s co-chair Joe Ryan, mean­while, was recent­ly quot­ed in a Wash­ing­ton State Wire pro­file say­ing that car­bon tax­es are regres­sive.

And no, I’m not mak­ing this up.

For Ryan, the mid­dle-of the-road approach is the best way for­ward. His polit­i­cal ethos is a true rar­i­ty and one that he is eager to share. “I believe, and what I see in the world, is that peo­ple of diverse ide­olo­gies have truth to con­tribute. To exclude or scape­goat or demo­nize, frame them as scape­goats or ene­mies, you’re real­ly los­ing part of the truth. And so it’s impor­tant to get the full truth,” he said.

Per­haps it’s his ded­i­ca­tion to find­ing the whole truth that allows him to be so can­did about some of the poten­tial real­i­ties of a car­bon tax often avoid­ed by pro­po­nents of pric­ing car­bon. Look­ing heavy-heart­ed, he admit­ted that there will like­ly be job loss­es in cer­tain indus­tries, cou­pled with gains in oth­ers. With­out hes­i­ta­tion, he also said this: “Car­bon tax­es are regres­sive in terms of dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact­ing low income peo­ple. Our state tax sys­tem is already regres­sive so to make it more regres­sive is a con­cern for Car­bon WA.” Low­er­ing the sales tax, he says, reduces the over­all regres­sive­ness of Washington’s tax code.

Empha­sis is mine.

If Ryan believes car­bon tax­es are regres­sive, why is he work­ing to pass I‑732? Why aren’t he and Car­bon­WA push­ing for a cap and trade sys­tem instead?

Oth­er states, like Cal­i­for­nia, have already gone in that direc­tion. And Wash­ing­ton vot­ers are cer­tain­ly open to the idea as well, as was evi­dent from our research last year, when we asked the fol­low­ing ques­tion in a statewide poll:

Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose imple­ment­ing a cap-and-trade sys­tem, where pol­luters would be charged a fee to reduce car­bon diox­ide emis­sions that would fund pub­lic schools and trans­porta­tion projects?

These were the answers:

• Sup­port: 55%
  • 37% “strong­ly sup­port” cap and trade
  • 18% “some­what sup­port” cap and trade
• Oppose: 43%
  • 11% “some­what oppose” cap and trade
  • 32% “strong­ly oppose” cap and trade
• 2% answered “not sure” 

This ques­tion was part of a poll con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for NPI from Sep­tem­ber 18th to 21st, 2015, and sur­veyed 613 Wash­ing­ton vot­ers like­ly to cast bal­lots in the Novem­ber 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion. The results have a mar­gin of sam­pling error of +/- 4.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

As this was a poll of like­ly 2015 vot­ers, we believe it actu­al­ly under­stat­ed the true lev­el of sup­port for cap and trade among this year’s elec­torate, which is pro­ject­ed to be sub­stan­tial­ly larg­er than last year’s.

(2015 saw the worst vot­er turnout in Wash­ing­ton State his­to­ry — at least since we began reg­is­ter­ing vot­ers in the 1930s.)

Now, Car­bon­WA likes to tout this sur­vey from G Squared Strate­gies, which in late 2014 asked four hun­dred like­ly vot­ers (which I’ll point out is a small­er sam­ple size than our poll from last year) the fol­low­ing question:

Would you favor or oppose the State of Wash­ing­ton impos­ing a car­bon tax on car­bon pro­duc­ing busi­ness­es if it also low­ered the state sales tax by 1% and elim­i­nat­ed the cur­rent busi­ness and occu­pa­tion tax­es on Washington’s busi­ness­es, caus­ing the new car­bon tax to be rev­enue neutral?”

53.7% of respon­dents in that sur­vey answered that they would be in favor, while 32.6% said they would be opposed. The poll had a mar­gin of error of +/- 4.9%.

Those per­cent­ages aren’t ter­ri­ble, but what are ter­ri­ble are the per­cent­ages that come back when the actu­al I‑732 bal­lot title has been test­ed. This is the ques­tion vot­ers will see on their bal­lots start­ing in October:

Ini­tia­tive Mea­sure No. 732 con­cerns taxes.

This mea­sure would impose a car­bon emis­sion tax on cer­tain fos­sil fuels and fos­sil-fuel-gen­er­at­ed elec­tric­i­ty, reduce the sales tax by one per­cent­age point and increase a low-income exemp­tion, and reduce cer­tain man­u­fac­tur­ing taxes.

Should this mea­sure be enact­ed into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]

Polling by the Alliance for Jobs & Clean Ener­gy has found the response in favor of the I‑732 bal­lot title to be just 39% — well under fifty per­cent. Yikes! The bal­lot title has­n’t per­formed much bet­ter in Car­bon­WA’s polling.

Keep in mind, this is where things stand for I‑732 before the impact of the inevitable, well-fund­ed No campaign.

Hav­ing worked for and against statewide ini­tia­tives for over a decade, we know a bad bal­lot title can be a major Achilles’ heel, just as a slick bal­lot title (the kind Tim Eyman always tries to wran­gle for his ini­tia­tives) can be a big blessing.

Car­bon­WA claims that I‑732 can pass in spite of its bad bal­lot title. We don’t see how, giv­en that I‑732 is so poor­ly writ­ten. The text does­n’t redeem the bal­lot title. You could argue I‑732 deserves the lack­lus­ter bal­lot title that it got.

If that weren’t bad enough, the oil indus­try now has plen­ty of mate­r­i­al to work with for what­ev­er ads and P.R. it decides to finance. They have co-chair Bau­man say­ing gas prices could rise twen­ty-five cents a gal­lon, and co-chair Ryan say­ing that car­bon tax­es are regres­sive and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact low income people.

The folks at Car­bon­WA seem to be still feel­ing the glow of hav­ing qual­i­fied (nar­row­ly). They may think they have a win­ner on their hands with I‑732, but they seem to be about the only ones who think that.

Per­suad­ing peo­ple to sign a peti­tion is one thing. Get­ting peo­ple to vote yes on an ini­tia­tive is much hard­er. When in doubt, peo­ple usu­al­ly vote no.

If Bau­man and Ryan’s goal is to build a broad coali­tion to embrace the pol­i­cy that they and their team have come up with, they’re already failing.