Ahead of State of the State Address, Center Publishes TCI Gas Tax Q&A

What Every Rhode Islander Should Know About the Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI)

Providence, RI – With Governor Raimondo expected to address climate change in her annual “State of the State Address” this evening, the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity today published a Question & Answer document about the carbon tax “cap and trade” regional compact she is advancing – the Transportation & Climate Initiative (TCI).

With four of the six New England state Governors publicly stating major concerns about TCI, if not outright rejection, and with Speaker Mattiello also expressing opposition, Governor Raimondo remains stubbornly committed to a scheme developed by radical environmentalists that purposefully seeks to make gasoline so expensive that Rhode Island motorists will be forced to drive less often.

Titled, ‘What Rhode Islanders Should Know About the TCI Gas Tax’, the Q&A document answers commonly asked questions about the objectives of TCI, how it works, and how it will impact Ocean State families and businesses. Initial details of the regional Transportation & Climate Initiative gas tax plan were released in December.

“The Governor may try to sugar-coat TCI in her address this evening, but Rhode Islanders should not be fooled; this is a crushing new tax on the budgets of families and businesses,” said the Center’s CEO, Mike Stenhouse. “Hard-working Rhode Islanders should not be purposefully punished for driving their kids to school, going to work, visiting family, going shopping, or delivering goods and services.”

With opposition mounting among state lawmakers, it is unclear if Governor Raimondo, who says TCI is necessary to “save our planet”, may seek to unilaterally impose the TCI gas tax on Ocean State motorists and truckers, or if she will seek legislative approval. The final TCI plan is expected in the early spring of 2020, when executive or legislative action could initiate.

The Center, part of a 12-state #NoTICtax coalition that will meet this Friday in Boston, signed an Open TCI Letter in December along with partners from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Virginia, Vermont, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Maine, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, and Washington, DC.

The Center’s policy brief released last month, the TCI Tax, lays out the ‘diabolical’ goals of TCI, a green-new-deal type program whose goal is to make gasoline so expensive that it will “go away”. Like all far-left contrivances to reduce carbon-gas emissions, the TCI gas tax will harm economic growth and will take money out of the pockets of residents, while failing to meet its stated environmental goals. The policy brief discusses in detail the many reasons why our Rhode Island should not join the TCI compact, including:

• In Rhode Island, with its already dismal business climate and exodus of people to lower-cost states, families and businesses cannot afford a significant new gas tax

• The failure of a similar regional scheme on electricity, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, has driven up consumer costs; has resulted in no added greenhouse gas reductions; and has caused economic harm. There is every reason to believe TCI will also produce a negative cost vs. benefit result. 

• The Governor should not try to bypass the Constitutional authority of the General Assembly by unilaterally seeking to impose this new gas tax

• Rhode Island could gain a significant competitive advantage in the region by refusing to sign-on to the TCI tax scheme by being able to offer lower-priced gasoline products

• There are many less disruptive and more efficient ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

• State and national legal challenges may result, along a number of potential Constitutional angle

The TCI Q&A, the TCI Open Letter, the TCI Gas Tax policy brief, and other related information can be found at RIFreedom.org/NoTCITax.