Washington State Labor Council votes to oppose CarbonWA’s Initiative 732

The Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, AFL-CIO, a fed­er­a­tion of more than six hun­dred unions rep­re­sent­ing near­ly half a mil­lion work­ers in Wash­ing­ton State, announced today that it has tak­en a posi­tion for­mal­ly oppos­ing Car­bon­WA’s I‑732, which back­ers have adver­tised as a “rev­enue neu­tral” tax swap that would levy a tax on emis­sions of gas­es like car­bon diox­ide, while low­er­ing sales and B&O taxes.

“To deal with the cli­mate cri­sis and ris­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures effec­tive­ly, an eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion will be required — a trans­for­ma­tion that can­not exclude the voic­es of work­ing peo­ple, their unions, or com­mu­ni­ties of col­or,” said WSLC Pres­i­dent Jeff John­son in a state­ment post­ed to The Stand.

“We need a car­bon and green­house gas reduc­tion pol­i­cy that caps and prices car­bon, and then invests car­bon rev­enues in lever­ag­ing the new clean ener­gy econ­o­my in a man­ner that is equi­table for work­ing peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. No work­er or com­mu­ni­ty should be left behind in this eco­nom­ic transformation.”

“I‑732 does not address these con­cerns and, in fact, locks us in to a sin­gle pol­i­cy that will cost our state Gen­er­al Fund near­ly $1 bil­lion. At a time our state is strug­gling to fund basic ser­vices — includ­ing pub­lic schools, men­tal health facil­i­ties, and many oth­er essen­tial ser­vices — I‑732 would send Wash­ing­ton in the wrong direc­tion and cre­ate more dam­ag­ing aus­ter­i­ty choices.”

The Machin­ists, one of the largest unions in the WSLC, vot­ed last autumn to take a posi­tion oppos­ing I‑732, while its sig­na­ture dri­ve was still ongoing.

Last month, Car­bon Wash­ing­ton (Car­bon­WA), the group behind I‑732, con­tem­plat­ed ter­mi­nat­ing the ini­tia­tive and not sub­mit­ting the remain­der of the sig­na­tures that they had col­lect­ed in favor of a com­pro­mise ini­tia­tive they could sup­port with the Alliance for Jobs & Clean Ener­gy (of which NPI and the WSLC are mem­bers). But ulti­mate­ly, they decid­ed to turn in their sig­na­tures.

I‑732 sub­se­quent­ly passed its ran­dom sam­ple check (though it was a close call, owing to an extreme­ly high num­ber of invalid sig­na­tures). It is now cer­ti­fied as an ini­tia­tive to the Leg­is­la­ture and the 2016 ballot.

If the Leg­is­la­ture ignores it, as expect­ed, it will be the first thing vot­ers see when they open up their autumn bal­lots this com­ing October.

Analy­sis pre­pared by staff work­ing for the Leg­is­la­ture and Depart­ment of Rev­enue sug­gests I‑732 would not be rev­enue neu­tral, as Car­bon­WA claims, but would instead cost the state hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars. Car­bon­WA and its back­ers strong­ly dis­pute the analy­sis and say the state’s math is wrong.