Some friends shared their frustration with trying to make sense of the interrelationship of AB 32 (California's climate change law), Proposition 23 (a ballot measure to nix our climate change law), and Proposition 26 (a measure to transform regulatory fees into taxes). Essentially, the Whitman game plan is to give the sham appearance that she cares about our health, environmental resources and climate change impacts. In reality, she wants to enable corporations to continue to sicken people and damage natural resources while removing a key tool for corporate accountability.
Meg Whitman opposes Proposition 23, the ballot measure to nix our climate change law, and might hope that people won't notice that she also opposes our climate change law. Meg apparently does not want the voters to nix AB 32 because she plans to unilaterally nix our climate law by issuing a moratorium order on her first day as governor. Whitman also supports Prop 26, which would remove a key tool of corporate accountability for external costs of pollution and could be used for climate change impacts.
It is no surprise that Meg Whitman supports Prop 26 ballot measure that is a huge gift to corporate polluters who want to avoid accountability for sickening people and polluting our environment.
Proposition 26 would effectively ban state and local governments from holding corporations accountable for some of the external costs that harm people and environment.
Prop 26 is another measure favored by polluters and oil industry. The oil industry, soft drink and alcohol companies spent $2 million to qualify Prop 26 for the ballot, and continue to spend millions more to ensure passage. In 2000, a "nearly identical" ballot measure was narrowly defeated.
Prop 26 supporters claim that it is simply a measure to implement the Prop 13 measure from 1978 that requires a 2/3 vote by our state legislature for increases in state taxes. Supporters spin Prop 26 as a measure to protect "taxpayers and consumers" from the "hidden taxes" imposed on us, with a little whiff of conspiracy, asserting that government "disguises new taxes as 'fees.'" This is simply a lie. It is not a measure to wipe out fees paid by "ordinary Californians," such as state park fees.
Prop 26 would overturn a unanimous California Supreme Court decision from 1997 that illustrates the type of expenses that some businesses believe should be paid by taxpayers rather than the responsible corporations. In 1991, the California legislature enacted a Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act that provided "evaluation, screening, and medically necessary follow-up services for children who were deemed potential victims of lead poisoning." This program was paid for entirely by fees assessed on manufacturers and others who contributed to environmental lead contamination. In this case, a paint company had to pay $97,825.26 in fees for 1991 and so it filed a lawsuit to argue that the fees constituted taxes. The Court held that the law imposed valid regulatory fees, not taxes, because the fees were imposed as mitigation for the "actual or anticipated adverse effects" from the operations of the business that was assessed the fee.
The court rejected the paint company's argument that the state does not have authority to "impose industry-wide "remediation fees" to compensate for the adverse societal effects generated by an industry's products."
A reasonable way to achieve Proposition 13's goal of tax relief is to shift the costs of controlling stationary sources of pollution from the tax-paying public to the pollution-causing industries themselves... . In our view, the shifting of costs of providing evaluation, screening, and medically necessary follow-up services for potential child victims of lead poisoning from the public to those persons deemed responsible for that poisoning is likewise a reasonable police power decision.
If the measure passes, taxpayers will have to pay the cost of harm that polluting industries cause because Prop 26 will essentially bar the state from imposing fees on corporations to cover the costs of environmental monitoring and remediation. Citizens living in areas being polluted will thus have to pay for the harm caused them twice - once with their health and once with their wallets. Moreover, if the state is effectively barred from imposing regulatory fees, then the "programs that enforce environmental, food safety and other laws will be scaled back, if not eliminated."
Prop 26 would reclassify mitigation fees imposed by government on business activities that harm public health, public safety or the environment as taxes. This chart provides examples of fees at risk from Prop 26:
The effective banning of mitigation fees would result from Prop 26's reclassification of such fees as taxes. Under existing law, the state legislature or local government may create or increase a fee by a simple majority vote. Under Prop 26, the mitigation fees would become taxes subject to a super majority vote of two-thirds. We know how well that has worked in the Senate.
Currently, the fossil fuel industry has carte blanche to pollute our air and water resources, leaving behind many hidden external costs that we pay nationwide. These hidden costs include health problems, environmental degradation, acid rain, water pollution, damage to our economy and national security costs. Our climate change law would alter this equation by reducing pollution and using more green energy.
By nixing our climate change law, Prop 23 essentially codifies a Fossil Fuel Tax on all Californians to pay most of the external costs of health care, life and environmental damages, and most harm will fall on low-income communities and people of color. The Fossil Fuel Industry wants to reap profits by maintaining the status quo no matter how many people are sickened or killed by their pollution.
A study by the Ella Baker Center and the California Environmental Justice Alliance concluded that the two Texas oil companies (Valero and Tesoro) that are bankrolling Prop 23 have been "repeatedly cited for producing deadly chemicals at their refineries that are exposing millions of California families to harm." The study also found that these two corporate oil Toxic Twins locate their facilities such that the "people who bear the biggest health burdens from these facilities are disproportionately people of color."
In my telephone press conference with Van Jones, Dolores Huerta and Pam Tau Lee, the message was clear: Prop 23 is a very underhanded measure designed to continue pollution that is now harming our health, and to protect Big Oil from having to compete with green energy investments that are now booming in California. It is not a job protector but a destroyer of jobs and good health. Jones stated that Prop 23 is designed to "knock out" Silicon Valley as a competitor of the big Texas oil industry for our energy future. Jones stated that now "one of every 4 dollars" of global outlay for clean tech investment is in California, and this "terrifies Big Oil."
A No Vote on Prop 23 means we keep our climate change law that will reduce harmful health and environmental impacts.
A No Vote on Prop 26 means that we can continue to hold corporate polluters accountable for harms that will continue despite moving forward with a green energy future.