Providence, RI - Two weeks after calling on the Governor to stop the TCI "gas tax", the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity today calls on Governor McKee to take a firm position against the imposition of costly and job-killing new energy mandates, specifically H5445, which is scheduled for a House floor vote Tuesday, after a version previously passed the Senate.
"There is no more time. Dan McKee must start paying attention to the economy and to the punishing energy mandates that socialist-left lawmakers are on the brink of passing. The Governor must immediately put to rest any notion that his administration will allow any job-killing, budget-destroying energy tax or mandate to be imposed on businesses and families who are struggling to recover from the pandemic," advised Mike Stenhouse, the Center's CEO. "It is time for the Governor to live up to his promises to the small business community by threatening a veto of H5445."
H5445 is perhaps the worst of many destructive "green new deal" type bills that would prevent Rhode Islanders from making their own energy choices; instead transferring unprecedented power to unelected bureaucrats, who support a radical green agenda, to mandate which energy options will be available to the public, and at what cost.
Regarding TCI, on December, former Governor Gina Raimondo signed-on Rhode Island, just one of three states to do so, to the TCI Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU). Implementation of TCI would lead to a significant increase in automobile and diesel gasoline prices, while also systematically limiting regional supplies of vehicle fuel.
In calling on Governor McKee to eschew the costly TCI gas tax, the Center points to research and polling that shows why TCI is poor public policy:
- Rhode Islanders are not "bad guys" that should be punished for driving their vehicles, as one gov't official in Mass. expressed
- The regressive TCI gas tax would disproportionately harm low-income families
- The high economic costs and job losses would further hamper our state's faltering economy, with virtually no environmental benefit in return
- An overwhelming majority of polled Ocean Staters do not support TCI, once they understand the high costs
- A TCI gas tax would make our state even less competitive, by weakening our already worst-in-the-nation business climate
Earlier this month, the Center announced a public campaign to petition the Governor and state legislative leaders to reject H5445 and the TCI compact: www.RIFreedom.org/EnergyChoices .
More information about the proposed TCI gas tax can be found on the Center's TCI webpage: RIFreedom.org/NoTCItax . The Center is one of over two-dozen organizations in the northeast working cooperatively to defeat TCI in their respective states.
