Vote no on Rep. Walsh’s four initiatives

State GOP Chair Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen. wants to do for the Washington state budget what he did for the state Republican Party budget.

Walsh and his hedge fund millionaire buddy are pushing four initiatives on us that benefit their other millionaire friends, leaving the rest of us holding the bag, and leaving our state budget in chaos.

If you like a well-funded state government, and want millionaires and polluters to pay their fair share, and want low energy bills, and want rational programs that benefit seniors and children, then vote no on all four of Walsh’s initiatives.

Donna Albert

Montesano

Repealing the Climate Commitment Act has my support

Human caused global warming is unquestionably real and must be addressed to minimize the very negative consequences.

Unfortunately, the Climate Commitment Act is a remarkably poor mechanism for doing so. Initiative 2117 repealing the Climate Commitment Act has my support.

The design of the Climate Commitment Act punishes fossil fuel consumption but the revenue generated finds its way into many programs that have little or nothing to do with reducing fossil fuel consumption. The ads opposing Initiative 2117 predict the disruption of well established unrelated programs if the two-year-old act is repealed.

The Climate Commitment Act contains no state effort to facilitate adoption of the intermittent supply of wind and solar power. Examples of such efforts could include support for pumped hydro storage, large scale battery experiments, additional frequency protection where required, and commitment to work with Bonneville Power Administration to facilitate grid connection or increase transmission to and from other control areas.

The Climate Commitment Act does not even employ a straightforward carbon tax but rather uses an auction process for a decreasing pool of carbon emission credits. This makes economic planning difficult because the size of the expense is unpredictable and creates the opportunity for speculators to profit at taxpayer expense without doing anything useful.

Something very like the Climate Commitment Act was introduced as an initiative a few years ago and soundly defeated. When the Legislature passed, and the Gov. Jay Inslee signed the bill irrespective of its defeat as an initiative, the impact to consumers was touted as a few cents per gallon of gas. It turned out to be about $.50 per gallon so far and will only go up from there. This does not inspire confidence.

The Legislature should go back to the drawing board and come up with a supportable plan that dedicates the revenue to realistic ways of adding non-fossil sources to the system and strengthening grid reliability.

Truman Seely

Aberdeen