New draft and meeting change to Thursdays?

Hello all:

1) Here's the bill language that I've submitted to the Secretary of State! We should get a ballot title &etc by Oct 7. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback, and note that we still have a bunch of work to do; in particular, Bruce has volunteered to work on the low-income definition, so anybody who wants to get in the loop on that should holler!

2) I'd like to propose that we change our next two meetings (and maybe all future meetings) from Tuesday to Thursday, so please comment on the blog or email me if that works or doesn't work for you. The reason for changing the Tu Oct 7 meeting to Th Oct 9 is that signature-gathering guru Katherine Bragdon can't make the 7th but can make the 9th. The reason for changing the Tu Nov 4 meeting to Th Nov 6 is that on the 6th we'll know more about the direction of state government &etc. And if we're going to change the next two meetings, maybe we should just change all of them to Thursdays, so please comment on the blog or email me to let me know (both for Oct and Nov in particular and for all future meetings in general) if that works or doesn't work for you.

3) Folks in the U-District who are interested in meeting periodically (weekly? biweekly?) should email me to get in the loop. We're just starting to explore dates and times &etc.

4) Agenda items for our next meeting (tentatively Th Oct 9 12-1pm downtown):
* Quick updates on legislative news, ballot measure news, internal stuff, speaking engagements &etc.
* Katherine Bragdon talking and taking Q&A about signature gathering campaigns.

Cheers!
yoram

Initiative draft from Code Reviser's Office!

Here's the draft the Code Reviser's office came up with based on the language I sent them and a few email exchanges. Some comments:

• I'm working on getting a .doc version of this.
• We now get to review this draft and make comments or revisions, and we have to do this before our next meeting on Oct 7! We must file a final version by October 2, at which point it goes to the Secretary of State to get a ballot title, summary, number, etc.
• Remember that this is just a test run, so we don't have to set everything in stone right now. Having said that, it would be good to take advantage of this opportunity to revise the text, so here are some questions I have... please add your own in the comments section or via email!
  
• Question #1 is about the definition in section 10(3): "Low income means household income that is at or below one hundred twenty-five percent of the federally established poverty level." This language came from an unrelated piece of state legislation, and I don't know whether or not it's appropriate for our purposes.
  
• Questions #2 and #3 are in a similar vein: Question #2 is about the part of section 4(1) that property owners are not eligible for the low-income sales tax credit: Is this a good idea or not? Question #3 is whether it's worth looking into a declining-credit structure so that there's not a precipitous drop-off, e.g., with someone receiving the full credit if their income is $x and receiving zero credit if their income is one dollar more than that?
• Question #4 is about section 10(1), which says that we're using metric tons instead of short tons. The difference isn't all that much (1 metric ton is about 1.1 short tons, so a $50 tax per metric ton is a bit less than $50 per short ton) but it's worth pondering for the sake of completeness :)
• FYI, the Code Reviser's Office gave me some push-back about calling this a "fee" instead of a "tax", but eventually they agreed. (They argued that a fee is something paid for a service, like a drivers license, and they went along with the argument that this is a fee for polluting the air.)
  

Notes from Sept 2 meeting

In brief

• Unless someone has last-minute corrections or wants to volunteer to file a "test" ballot measure (don't be shy :), Yoram will file a test ballot measure containing the language here.
  
• Yoram will email State Senator Eric Oemig, who asked us for ideas to look at, with a list. Details below, but the five ideas we decided on were (1) a clean energy competitive grants program, (2) sales tax credits for low-income households; (3) energy-efficiency program tied to county-level property tax credits; (4) efforts relating to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; and (5) administrative costs of these and of imposing a global warming pollution fee.
• Next meeting downtown 12-1pm on Tuesday Oct 7. Will also investigate meeting with students at UW once the school year starts in late September.

In length

• In attendance (as private citizens unless noted): Christy, Catherine, Yoram.
• WCI update: Rumor still has it to expect fireworks when the WCI releases their proposal Sept 22. Permit allocations should be especially contentious.
• Website update: Catherine continues to update the website. The email sign-up form is now functional, so anyone who wants to test it is encouraged to do so. (It would be good to test it in different browsers.)
• We agreed to send Sen Oemig the following list of exploratory ideas: (1) a competitive grants program to fund clean energy R&D programs; (2) use of funds to make direct cash payments to low-income households, preferably in the form of a sales tax credit; (3) use of funds for county-level programs that provide local property tax credits for energy efficiency investments; (4) options for adding funding and/or programs to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program; and (5) estimates of administration costs for the global warming fee and for the ideas listed above.
• Unless anyone hollers in the next day or two, Yoram will file a "test" ballot measure containing the language here, which is modified in fairly minor ways from the pre-meeting version. (Perhaps the biggest change is from "carbon tax" to "global warming pollution fee" :)
  
• Next meetings on the first Tuesdays of the month (e.g., Oct 7, Nov 4, Dec 2) 12-1pm downtown. Will also look into involving UW students when school starts up again.