Brace yourself. A new, long-term, and expensive tax may be headed your way unless we stand up and take charge of our collective energy future. So get ready to call your state legislators to say “no” to new and unprecedented taxation.
Here’s what’s going on. A so-called Omnibus Energy Plan being considered in the Massachusetts legislature may include a new tax before the taxpayers can mount an effective reply. The plan would set back our efforts to reduce our dependency on polluting fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil. Renewable energy sources – sun, wind, and water – are much cheaper because they are no one’s private property. Yet solar power, one of the waves of the future, is not even included in the current version of the so-called omnibus plan.
A tax by any other name is still a tax. The omnibus plan might label it a tariff, a fee, a charge, or a whatever, but if it waddles like a tax, quacks like a tax, and bites like a tax, then that’s what it is, so let’s not mince words.
How will this tax be disguised? The trick being considered is to have it appear on your monthly electric bill. It won’t show up on your tax bill, so you might never realize that you’ve been taxed at all. As many of you know, your electric bill has two parts: you pay for generation and for transmission. The electric company buys some form of fuel – coal, oil, or natural gas usually and uses it to generate electric power. The transmission part of your bill pays for electric energy to be brought into homes, businesses, and organizations.
Let’s be clear. Coal, oil, and natural gas suppliers are private enterprises. They are regulated but are nonetheless for-profit enterprises, paying their investors returns on investment. But now renewable fuels – which no one owns – are threatening the fossil fuel industry.
The fossil fuel industries are fighting back to retain their control over our energy future. So they are trying to sell the citizenry and the legislature on the idea that Massachusetts needs to pay for major additions to its infrastructure – pipelines and the like – to respond to our upcoming energy needs.
This idea is unprecedented in Massachusetts. The expense of infrastructure has always been treated as a cost of doing business. A company risks capital for future profits. But fossil fuel suppliers want our legislators to pass the cost of infrastructure on to the taxpayers through increased electric bills. Apparently this gambit has gained traction within state legislative circles.
Recently Attorney General Maura Healey commissioned a report to investigate and analyze the fossil fuel industry’s claims. Experts agree Massachusetts will need additional energy during the transition period to renewable fuels.
But they deny that this need is as large as the suppliers of fossil fuels maintain. The need can be satisfied through adjustments to supply and repairs to infrastructure. In short, no tax is required.
Legislative bills can be moved quickly, short circuiting public input. I urge readers to contact legislators by telephone now. Tell them to oppose any tax or levy to pay for fossil fuel infrastructure through your electric bills or other means. To contact your legislators, go to https://malegislature.gov/People/Search.
If we are successful, the public version of the Omnibus Energy Plan will make no mention of a new tax. You will have stopped a tax that could have cost you and your neighbors a lot of money for many years to come, and you will have also protected our environment for future generations.
Steve Herman of Easthampton, president emeritus of Garrett College in McHenry, Maryland, is a member of the Legislation Committee of the Valley-based Climate Action Now.