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Republican lawmakers walked out of the Capitol in 2019 and 2020 because of their vehement opposition to proposed carbon emissions reduction legislation referred to as “cap and trade.”
Those walkouts came after years of wrangling over the policy, which came in a series of iterations but would have used financial penalties or incentives to compel businesses to reduce their carbon emissions.
Despite that brutal history, the Democratic co-chairs of the Joint Transportation Committee today officially surfaced an idea that’s been brewing in Salem over the past week—inserting a new version of cap and trade into a transportation funding bill the committee and the Oregon Department of Transportation have been pursuing for more than a year.
On May 22, the co-chairs, state Sen. Chris Gorsek (D-Gresham) and state Rep. Susan McLain (D-Hillsboro), issued a memo with their latest thinking, including a plan to “replace the current Climate Protection Program with a market-based emissions reduction program, linking to other West Coast markets and generating ongoing revenue.”
After the failure of cap-and-trade legislation in 2020, then-Gov. Kate Brown issued an executive order that mandated carbon emissions reductions for the state’s largest smokestack industries. Businesses don’t like the program, but they haven’t forgotten how much they dislike cap and trade.
In an email circulated to members this week, Oregon Business & Industry, the state’s largest business lobbying group, outlined the situation.
“OBI’s position on the Climate Protection Program is well established. In addition to concerns about executive branch overreach in adopting the policy, the program threatens significant cost increases for businesses and consumers, imposes a draconian and inflexible emissions reduction schedule, does not align with other existing carbon markets, and is subject to little oversight from the legislative branch,” the OBI message said.
“However, even as we remain interested in any effort to improve or replace the program, we are skeptical that this year’s transportation package presents a viable pathway—both in terms of policy and politics—for meaningful reform. It is unclear whether there is enough time left in this session to develop a workable cap-and-trade proposal to supplant the CPP, especially one that addresses the complexity of a program that differentially impacts a variety of stakeholders.”
OBI also nodded to the history of past battles over cap-and-trade legislation: “It’s even less clear whether lawmakers have the appetite for linking such an ambitious effort to a transportation package that already faces its own set of political challenges.”
In fact, on May 21, the House and Senate Republican caucuses released the latest version of their own ideas for a transportation bill. Those ideas include a variety of cost-saving measures, but do not include anything about repealing Gov. Brown’s executive order and replacing it with a new version of cap and trade.
What makes the whole conversation even more fascinating is that the idea to wedge cap and trade into the bill appears to be the brainchild of a Republican who is his caucus’s point man on transportation, according to the OBI email.
“Sen. Bruce Starr (R-Dundee), who is one of a few Republicans at a negotiating table set by the [House] Speaker and Senate President, is exploring cap-and-trade legislation that would supplant the existing Climate Protection Program,” OBI writes, “with an eye toward increasing the overall funds available for transportation-related projects.”
Gorsek and McLain said in a joint statement this morning that lawmakers in both parties support the ideas they are pursuing—including cap and trade.
“Members of both parties are working together to develop a proposal that will address the issues we have been focused on all along: safety, maintenance and long-term sustainability,” the co-chairs said. “We’ve gotten to this point after years of hard work and engagement from hundreds of stakeholders and Oregonians from every corner of the state.”
Gov. Tina Kotek has not yet taken a position on whether she supports trying to rescind her predecessor’s executive order and replace it with the latest version of cap and trade. Her spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering the state.