Elected leaders, not bureaucrats, should have tax power
Do you remember our warning that TCI = TAX? The Transportation and Climate Initiative is a multistate initiative pushing to implement a carbon capand-tax system on transportation fuels. That’s a fancy way of saying it’s a gas and diesel tax. TCI put out initial predictions of an up to 17 cents per gallon price increase per gallon of gas, while two separate thirdparty studies conducted by the Beacon Hill Institute and the Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts claim the increase will look more like 38 cents per gallon, with little to no significant carbon emissions reductions.
While COVID-19 pushed TCI to the backburner for the past few months, TCI has come back into focus as the final Memo of Understanding is due to come out this month. Out of the 12 states initially involved, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu saw the writing on the wall and backed out last December. Most other governors involved have also started to pump the brakes, the latest being our very own Gov. Charlie Baker, who recently signaled his willingness to reassess the program.
Baker noted, “We’re living at a point in time right now that’s dramatically different than the point in time we were living in when people’s expectations about miles traveled and all the rest were a lot different.”
A recent poll conducted by the Fiscal Alliance Foundation found that 60% of Democratic, 69% of independent and 75% of Republican voters agreed with Gov. Baker’s new position on TCI.
Baker’s position is now out of sync with his own appointed Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Kathleen Theoharides, who also serves as the chair of the TCI leadership team. TCI is facilitated by Georgetown University. On Monday, Theoharides insisted that she was continuing to pursue joining TCI at full steam ahead.
Her position is completely out of touch with the postCOVID-19 world and points to one of the biggest problems most people have with the program: unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats should not have the power of taxation.
Theoharides went on to say that she supports TCI because it puts a price on carbon for the transportation sector, but doesn’t want to pursue putting a new price on carbon for electricity. She said, “We feel very strongly that adding another carbon price on to the electricity system will increase the cost of electricity relative to other fuels, not only burdening residents with larger electric bills but also making our own efforts to electrify even more challenging.” If that logic seems inconsistent to you, you’re not alone.
The state Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs continued to tell her audience that if not enough wind power comes online over the next decade, the state will need nuclear power to make up for the shortfall needed to keep up with demand and also be on track to hit arbitrary state emissions reductions goals. While that may sound reasonable, keep in mind that no one at the State House is publicly discussing building nuclear power plants. We hope decisions of that magnitude would come from elected lawmakers, who are best situated to gauge the mood of their constituents for building new nuclear power stations.
Unlike Secretary Theoharides, Gov. Baker is directly accountable to the people of Massachusetts. In our current situation, while many white-collar workers have the luxury of working from home, the people that do continue to commute are the blue collar and essential workers that are keeping our economy moving through this trying time. The last thing we should be doing to them is adding a regressive TCI gas tax.
TCI is perhaps best summed up from a participant in a virtual TCI listening session — a left-wing environmental justice advocate — who commented that, “It’s taxing poor people, so we can subsidize rich people’s electric cars.” She hit the nail on the head. These decisions should be made by our elected officials, the legislature and the governor, who are all held accountable by elections, not an overzealous and unelected climate bureaucrat.