Omnibus bill an imprudent power grab by lawmakers

The first week of August is typically marked by the calm beginning of the Legislature’s annual summer recess.

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and lawmakers’ eagerness to ram through unpopular legislation under the noses of their constituents, the first week of August in 2020 was marked by an eleventh-hour, imprudent power grab.

I’m talking about the passage of H.4912, an act creating a 2050 road map to a clean and thriving commonwealth in the House of Representatives.

Among other things, H.4912 endorses the Transportation Climate Initiative and leaves open the possibility that the state will implement various carbon tax schemes in the future.

The bill puts many decisions about taxation and regulation in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, decisions that bureaucrats do not have the power to make. As typical of the Legislature these days, H.4912 packages multiple proposals, which deserve separate votes, into one omnibus bill, with the intent of bypassing the process set in law for making state appropriations.

Legalities aside, more than anything else, the passage of H.4912 at this time is as wrongheaded an action by the Legislature that I could imagine.

The Beacon Hill Institute recently conducted a study on the economic impact of the TCI on the commonwealth. According to our calculations, the total loss of economic output, measured in real GDP, from the TCI would rise to $788 million by 2022, far exceeding the benefits it would confer. These losses would be inflicted when the state is struggling to get out of massive contractions in business activity and the labor market.

Additionally, as the bill proudly notes in its title, H.4912 is a 30-year plan to make a green Massachusetts.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that making 30-year plans without accounting for world-changing events is a fool’s errand. The bill does just that, including a provision for the Legislature and bureaucracy to implement ever-rising carbon tax schemes. The bill doesn’t account for possible advancements in clean energy, carbon capture and sequestration technology, or the negative effects of taxation and regulation on the state economy.

Far from a road map, H.4912 is tantamount to embarking on a transatlantic ocean voyage with the ability to speed up the ship but not to change course. The Legislature may have a destination we all want to reach in mind, but lawmakers on Beacon Hill cannot see past their favored method of getting there.

In reality, this piece of legislation sets Massachusetts on a course for further economic contraction, not a green utopia. If it is passed by the Senate, Gov. Charlie Baker should veto this imprudent power grab by the House of Representatives.