CarbonWA’s I‑732 heads into summer with bare majority in support, NPI poll finds

Although this week marks the sig­na­ture sub­mis­sion dead­line for 2016 ini­tia­tives to the peo­ple, it’s worth remem­ber­ing that there are two ini­tia­tives to the 2016 Leg­is­la­ture that were pre­vi­ous­ly cer­ti­fied to the bal­lot at the begin­ning of this year. Nei­ther was act­ed on by the House and Sen­ate, so the peo­ple will decide their fate in Novem­ber. The first ini­tia­tive vot­ers will see on their bal­lot is Car­bon­WA’s I‑732, and we test­ed its bal­lot title last month in our end-of-spring poll.

Here’s what we found:

There will be a mea­sure on Wash­ing­ton’s Novem­ber 2016 bal­lot called Ini­tia­tive 732, con­cern­ing tax­es. The descrip­tion reads as fol­lows: 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. If the elec­tion were being held now, would you def­i­nite­ly vote yes, prob­a­bly vote yes, prob­a­bly vote no, or def­i­nite­ly vote no on Ini­tia­tive 732?

• Yes: 52%
  
  • Def­i­nite­ly vote yes: 21%
  • Prob­a­bly vote yes: 31%
• No: 39%
  
  • Prob­a­bly vote no: 21%
  • Def­i­nite­ly vote no: 18%
• Not sure: 8%

This sur­vey of 679 like­ly Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from June 14th-15th, 2016; all respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed via land­line. The poll has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.8% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.

These are the best num­bers we’ve seen for the I‑732 bal­lot title, but still not very robust con­sid­er­ing that pro­gres­sives are not uni­fied behind I‑732 and con­sid­er­ing that is like­ly going to need to with­stand a NO cam­paign with some mon­ey behind it. There’s sim­ply no cush­ion, no mar­gin for error in these numbers.

Notice that the per­cent­age of respon­dents def­i­nite­ly plan­ning to vote for I‑732 is only 21%. Con­trast that with the 56% of respon­dents who are def­i­nite­ly sup­port­ive of I‑1491 (extreme risk pro­tec­tion orders).

The Alliance for Jobs & Clean Ener­gy, which NPI is a mem­ber of, pre­vi­ous­ly test­ed the I‑732 bal­lot title and found that it start­ed out at 39% in favor.

Aver­age our sur­vey’s find­ings with theirs, and you get 45.5% Yes. That’s sim­ply not where a Yes cam­paign wants to be head­ing into an election.

NPI has tak­en a posi­tion oppos­ing I‑732, as has the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, OneAm­er­i­ca, Fuse, and many oth­er pro­gres­sive orga­ni­za­tions based here in the Pacif­ic North­west. The recent­ly fin­ished con voter’s pam­phlet state­ment nice­ly sum­ma­rizes our objections:

State Deficit

I‑732 will make Washington’s bud­get mess worse. A Depart­ment of Rev­enue analy­sis found I‑732 will cut fund­ing avail­able for edu­ca­tion, health care, and oth­er vital ser­vices by $797 mil­lion over the next six years. Our state faces a $5 bil­lion deficit and court orders to meet basic edu­ca­tion and men­tal health needs. I‑732 makes this sit­u­a­tion worse.

Cli­mate and Jobs

Cli­mate pol­i­cy must be com­pre­hen­sive, so it doesn’t harm peo­ple and kill jobs. I‑732 fails this test. A clean-ener­gy econ­o­my can reduce car­bon emis­sions and reverse cli­mate change while also cre­at­ing fam­i­ly-wage jobs, rebuild­ing crum­bling infra­struc­ture, invest­ing in areas hard­est hit by pol­lu­tion, and pro­vid­ing a “Just Tran­si­tion” for work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties. I‑732 doesn’t do any of this. Instead, I‑732 impos­es an accel­er­at­ing car­bon tax on busi­ness­es, with no pro­vi­sions for com­pli­ance flex­i­bil­i­ty or ener­gy-effi­cien­cy incen­tives. Some busi­ness­es will sim­ply move their jobs and pol­lu­tion across state lines.

Equi­ty

Vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies in com­mu­ni­ties near pol­lu­tion hot spots and work­ers in ener­gy inten­sive indus­tries are hard­est hit by pol­lu­tion. But I‑732’s “Work­ing Fam­i­lies Tax Exemp­tion” pro­vides less than half of this pop­u­la­tion with any relief from increased ener­gy costs. These com­mu­ni­ties will need invest­ments and jobs to make an equi­table tran­si­tion to a for­ward-think­ing clean-ener­gy econ­o­my. I‑732 ignores this. At a time when we are strug­gling to main­tain good jobs and fund basic ser­vices, I‑732 would send Wash­ing­ton in the wrong direction.

Vote NO.

Back when there was still time to put a cam­paign togeth­er, NPI urged the Alliance for Jobs & Clean Ener­gy to stick to its pledge to qual­i­fy its own plan to the Novem­ber bal­lot to com­pete with I‑732. Sad­ly, that did­n’t happen.

We believe the best course of action now is to reject I‑732 in Novem­ber and work to pass a com­pre­hen­sive plan to stop pol­lu­tion and address dam­age to the cli­mate in the 2017 Leg­is­la­ture — if we get a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leg­is­la­ture. Oth­er­wise, we’ll need to put togeth­er a new ini­tia­tive cam­paign — hope­ful­ly one that excites pro­gres­sives and gets near unan­i­mous or unan­i­mous sup­port from the envi­ron­men­tal movement.