The crippling cost of a supermajority virtue signaling with other people’s money.
by Rob Roper
This week, the Vermont Senate passed the Renewable Energy Standard bill (H.289) by a vote of 18-8, making no amendments to the bill as passed by the House back in March. What this bill would do is mandate Vermonters via their electric utilities buy more expensive, less reliable renewable energy – in large part from politically connected campaign donors in the renewable energy business.
The cost to ratepayers? The estimates vary, but the average expectation is around a 7% increase in your electric bill. And that’s just the added increase caused by the crony-mandates. It doesn’t include the expected, natural inflationary price increases. In total dollars, the original cost of this scheme according to both the Department of Public Service and the Joint Fiscal Office was $1 billion over ten years. After some arm twisting by VPIRG and Renewable Energy Vermont, JFO lowered estimate to around half a billion. Even if the low estimate is correct (BWAAAHAAAAhahahah!) that still an average of roughly $50 million a year being syphoned out of Vermonters’ wallets and into the pockets of special interests.
As Senator Irene Wrenner (D-Chittenden North), one of just two Democrats to vote against the bill, summed up with evident frustration, “My constituents are reeling from higher costs. This is unacceptable. Why are we going to vote for a bill that hasn’t been thoroughly vetted by the senate? We have no clear understanding of what this will do to our constituents, and it will add another incredible burden to our constituents.” Her fellow Ds care not.
Speaking of adding another incredible burden to constituents, over in the House they took up S.259, a bill to establish a Vermont Climate Superfund, which basically says Vermont will send a multi-million (maybe billion?) dollar bill to 73 fossil fuel companies for climate damages and then wait for them to just fork over the cash. While it would admittedly be nice if they did, I expect this sternly worded invoice will be received in the halls of Exxon Mobil and crew with about the same seriousness I took a recent email from the President of Uganda informing me that I had won their national lottery and just needed to provide my bank account and social security numbers to collect. In other words, not much.
Nevertheless, S.259 allocates – wastes! — $600,000 of our taxpayer dollars to pay new bureaucrats and outside consultants to come up with the number our Attorney General will dramatically slide face down across the table (metaphorically speaking, of course) for the oil companies to contemplate. While $600,000 may not sound like a lot to the Ways & Means Committees, as a taxpayer, think of this as being forced to pay for a $600,000 rock by someone who intends to throw it at a hornets’ nest — that you are standing under. The cost of the rock isn’t your biggest problem.
After the oil companies dramatically take a Zippo to Vermont’s demand and leave it slowly smoldering in an ashtray on their desk (metaphorically speaking, of course), the next step in this dance is for the Vermont Attorney General to sue those 73 companies. This will cost not a few hundred thousand, but millions, and good luck with it! We’d be better off spending the money on Powerball tickets because when you lose at Powerball, the lottery doesn’t come after you for potentially tens of millions in attorney’s fees – which even the proponents of this idiocy admit is a distinct possibility.
A lawsuit will also take years, and at the end of all that time and expense, the odds of our winning this case are slim for a number of reasons this space is too small to get into in detail but, the word “unconstitutional” did come up in debate quite a bit! And here’s the kicker…. If Vermont did somehow win this lawsuit, the oil companies would simply pass the cost of the impact fee on to their customers. Again, that’s you!
Of course, the House passed it 94-38 because, hey, it’s your chips they’re playing with in this legal casino.
Add to these useless but painful bites out of your paycheck the estimated 70 cent per gallon Clean Heat Standard these same folks passed last year, and the similar Clean Transportation Standard they’re planning for next year, and all the rest of the Climate Virtue Signaling Agenda and Vermont households are looking at thousands of dollars in added annual expense. For nothing. None of this will impact the climate, and all of it distracts and take resources away from dealing with problems we can actually solve.
I wish it were just climate policies that are driving Vermonters into the poor house, but Senator Russ Ingalls (R-Essex) expressed it best when he concluded, “We’re raising electric rates by maybe 7%. 20% property tax increase. Fuel oil by 70 cents a gallon. Food costs are up 35%. Insurance costs are going up [H.766]. We’re passing these bills to ‘save’ Vermonters. Who’s going to save Vermonters from us?”
The only possible answer to that, of course, is Vermonters themselves at the ballot box this November. Or nobody.
Rob Roper is a freelance writer who has been involved with Vermont politics and policy for over 20 years. This article reprinted with permission from Behind the Lines: Rob Roper on Vermont Politics, robertroper.substack.com