Opinion/Stenhouse: No lumps of TCI coal in your stocking
Mike Stenhouse is CEO of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity. Chris Hudson is vice president of government affairs for Americans For Prosperity.
This holiday season, the TCI gas tax is dead. And the final nail in the coffin was pounded home by none other than Rhode Island, the very last state to give up on the controversial plan that sought to eliminate all gasoline-powered vehicles.
One year ago, former Gov. Gina Raimondo signed up the Ocean State to a nonbinding memorandum of understanding in support of the Transportation & Climate Initiative, a regional gasoline cap-and-trade scheme. If enacted, TCI would have filled the Christmas stockings of all Rhode Islanders with big lumps of TCI coal in the form of higher gas taxes and limited fuel supplies.
Then, as one of only three remaining states of the original 13 from two years ago, plus the District of Columbia, Rhode Island’s environmental elite blindly pushed forward with their regressive scheme — seeking to play the role of Green-Grinch.
But, thankfully, one year later, Rhode Islanders will not be punished for driving their vehicles to work, for taking their children to school or for going shopping or on vacation.
Such a highly regressive gas tax and the projected $1,200-per-family cost (higher fuel costs plus the increased costs of delivered food and goods), according to research and a poll conducted by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, are highly unpopular among the public. A petition opposing TCI generated more than 15,000 emails to state lawmakers.
In March, the center called on Gov. Dan McKee to withdraw from TCI. The state Senate passed enabling legislation last spring but the House did not take up the measure. A May 2021 open letter to the governor by the center, listing 12 coalition signatories and a range of reasons not to join the TCI compact, was ignored by politicians beholden to the alarmist and misguided environmental agenda.
Despite the public’s resistance to the TCI plan, which would also systematically restrict the supply of gasoline, the Ocean State’s political elite held out for as long as they could — and remained steadfast in their support of TCI — until the writing on the wall became unavoidably clear.
Just before Thanksgiving, Governor McKee followed the lead of Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, who had publicly divorced themselves from the TCI gas tax earlier in the week — meaning that the crushing fuel tax on motorists would not proceed.
It took the public shame of being the last state to openly stand in support of new gas taxes for the Rhode Island governor and House speaker to admit defeat and face reality, especially given the high gas prices that we are already seeing due to punishing energy policies.
The defeat of TCI is a tremendous victory for the 14-state #NoTCItax coalition that our two organizations vigorously participated in; a coalition that has been fighting against this antichoice, job-killing initiative for many years. It is not often in Rhode Island that we win a significant policy victory.
But the larger green agenda did not die with the TCI gas tax. It won’t take long for the environmental left to get behind some new scheme to raise money — schemes that will do nothing to impact global warming.
The climate alarmists should take stock of what TCI’s defeat is telling them and not double-down on impossible green-energy target levels and new plans to greatly reduce energy supplies and raise overall energy costs for Ocean Staters. If they push people to choose between living in such a restrictive environment or moving to another state, the result will be as inevitable as it is predictable.
Thankfully, this Christmas season, our stockings will not be stuffed with the blackened lumps of TCI-gas-tax coal that were planned to be imposed on us by the Rhode Island government.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Opinion/Stenhouse: No lumps of TCI coal in your stocking
