State Senator Joe Pittman is calling on Governor Josh Shapiro to get Pennsylvania out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
The announcement from the Senate Majority Leader came after a 17-member task force he appointed could come to no consensus on how to make the state the first major fossil fuel state to adopt carbon pricing over power plant emissions. Shapiro said that the administration would review the task force’s full set of recommendations as they await a decision from the commonwealth court on whether a governor has the right to force power plant owners to pay the fees or if he must seek legislative approval first. That stemmed from Governor Wolf making an executive order to join RGGI.
Pittman said in a statement that Shapiro needs to accept one of the recommendations, which is to leave RGGI immediately. He said that the “RGGI Electric Tax violates our state constitution, which grants exclusive power to the legislative branch to levy taxes. The actions of Gov. Wolf and his decision to unilaterally force Pennsylvania to join RGGI was a failed policy. Unfortunately to date, the Shapiro administration has chosen to follow in those same footsteps,” and while the working group could not come to a consensus decision, two points were made clear: “There was not consensus on the preferred specific form of cap-and-invest’ and ‘Legislative codification is the preferred method of institutionalizing the various elements outlined.’
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