Updates and Thursday March 5 meeting downtown

1) Our very own Todd Myers has an op-ed in today's Seattle Times, "Create incentive to cut emissions with carbon price." (For the record, the piece is paired with a piece in yesterday's Times, "Cap-and-invest approach good for environment and economy" by Michael Butler of Cascadia Capital.)

2) Our next downtown meeting is Th March 5 12-1pm at the usual location (1402 3rd Ave, 5th floor conference room). The agenda includes a WCI update and next steps on the spreadsheet and other updates below. I feel like we're building some momentum, so keep it up! One thing that everyone can do is try to get feedback on the proposal below from friends, local businesses, etc. (I've found that talking to local business owners is great fun! You'll certainly learn a lot about the tax burden on businesses :)

3) I've had valuable conversations with lots of different folks (see the list below), and this updated spreadsheet reflects the resulting proposal. In a nutshell, here's what the current proposal includes and how it differs from the last version:

• As before, impose a carbon tax of $50/ton of CO2 in 2010, with additional increases of $10/ton each year starting in 2015. This generates about $4.3 billion a year in 2010.
• As before, use $1.9 billion to replace the state portion of the property tax, leaving $2.4b.
• As before, set aside 10% of the revenue to offset impacts on low-income households, leaving $1.9b. (See number-crunching note about this below.)
  
• Instead of doubling the small business B&O tax credit, increase it 10-fold. This idea came from John Burbank of Economic Opportunity Institute, takes up "only" $260m, and means that the percentage of businesses who are exempt from B&O taxes goes up from 48% to 88%. (See details on the second sheet of the spreadsheet.)

That leaves $1.7 billion and the spreadsheet allows this amount to be allocated in different percentages among the following options (each with a cutesy name :)

1. The Sarah Palin: Rebate local property taxes, for a total state/local property tax reduction of over 40% if all $1.7 billion goes here.
2. The Van Jones: K-12 math/science education, higher ed clean energy research, green jobs, energy efficiency, etc.
3. The Dick Cheney: Rebate state B&O taxes across the board, cutting state B&O taxes by over 50% if all $1.7 billion goes here.
   

Right now the spreadsheet has 100% of the revenue going to the Dick Cheney option, in the hopes that this will attract AWB and/or other business groups. Time will tell if that actually happens or if we'd have a stronger proposal by switching some or all of that money to the Sarah Palin or Van Jones options, but getting business support would be fabulous, and as a first step it would be dreamy to get an op-ed signed by a major business leader and a major environmental leader. (Any ideas???)

PS. Here are some of the folks I've talked to lately. Many thanks to them for their feedback, and as always being on this list does not mean that any individual or group is supporting or endorsing anything.

• Clark Williams-Derry of Sightline Institute
  
• Michael Lazarus of Stockholm Environment Institute
• Jeff Chapman of WA Budget and Policy Center
• Doug Howell
• Dallas Burtraw of Resources for the Future (RFF, a DC-based environmental economics think-tank; Dallas has tentatively agreed to do some number-crunching for us on income-decile impacts, which is awesome)
• John Burbank and Marilyn Watkins of Economic Opportunity Institute
  
• Graham Evans of WA Clean Technology Alliance

And in the days ahead I'm hoping to meet with folks at Puget Sound Energy and others.