Think tanks to gov: scuttle TCI program
Fuel fee would carry heavy cost in jobs, Bay State wealth
Two Boston think tanks are urging Gov. Charlie Baker to reject a regional collaboration intended to improve transportation, develop the clean energy economy and reduce emissions from vehicles and fuels, saying it would further damage Massachusetts’s economy and slow its recovery.
A new study commissioned by the Fiscal Alliance Foundation and conducted by the Beacon Hill Institute finds the costs associated with the Transportation and Climate Initiative will increase across the board over the next two years as the Massachusetts economy continues to reel from the pandemic and drivers stay off the roads in record numbers.
“This tax … will be regressive. It’s going to drive businesses elsewhere,” state Rep. David DeCoste, R-Plymouth, said at a press conference Friday with members of the foundation and BHI. “I hope … the governor will put it on the shelf.”
The study notes that the second quarter of 2020 saw the largest decline in real gross domestic product in Massachusetts history and estimates that even with the arrival of vaccines and potential federal stimulus funds, the state’s economy will not fully recover to prepandemic levels until after 2022.
The study estimates the new costs of TCI to the Massachusetts economy would be:
•A reduction of business investment by $305 million
•A reduction of disposable income by $1.649 billion
•A decline of 9,993 jobs in 2022
•A cost of $630 to the average Massachusetts household and
•A decline of over $1 billion in the state real GDP
“The BHI study confirms what most people intuitively already understand — increasing costs to consumers in the midst of one of the worst pandemics and economic downturns in history is a bad idea,” said Paul Craney, a spokesman for the Fiscal Alliance Foundation. “It hurts our workers, it hurts our businesses, and it hurts our state. Most of all, the brunt of the costs of this program is going to be carried by the people who are least able to afford it: blue collar workers, essential workers and the poor.”
Earlier this week, the governor told reporters his administration likely would make a decision about TCI before the end of the month.
“I think at this point in time, it’s important to sort of re-examine a lot of the assumptions that went into what the impact would be, in terms of carbon reduction, based on the changing nature of transportation generally,” he said. “… If you pursue a price on carbon associated with transportation, what you get for that price on carbon in a world that looks a lot different now, and potentially will stay a lot different for the next several years relative to the one we thought we were living in a year ago.”