Notes from meeting with WA Roundtable's Steve Mullin

I met today with Steve Mullin, head of WA Roundtable. Detailed notes are below, but the overall impression I got (not unexpected) was that neutrality was pretty much the most we could hope for, and in order to get that we'd need to look at impacts on Boeing, Microsoft, Weyerhaeuser, etc. Details:

1. Climate change is not one of their priorities (taxes and education are).
2. He expressed some personal preference for carbon taxes over cap-and-trade because of simplicity &etc, which reminded me of Puget Sound Energy's statement of "support for a carbon tax... [because it's] straightforward and transparent... A carbon tax would give the utility sector the cost certainty required to make prudent long-term resource planning decisions and achieve regulatory approval for recovering capital investments."
   
3. He was interested in relative tax burdens on households v. business---claiming that the lack of a state income tax pushed the tax burden onto business---so I shared with him, e.g., Bruce's research on the property tax burden (and hence any property tax relief) being split about 60/40 between households and business.
4. He was keen on reducing the B&O (business) tax burden.
5. He worried about the impact of a carbon tax on Boeing. (His language was stronger than that :) But he also said that Boeing probably had a large property burden that they'd love to reduce. He gave me the name of a contact there and I've already emailed him.
   
6. He also gave me a contact at Microsoft (I've emailed her too) and suggested that they might be receptive to a carbon tax.
7. Because education is one of their priorities, we talked a bit about setting aside a chunk of money for education, but I didn't get a strong sense that this would make the proposal more attractive in their eyes.