Commentary by Maureen Harkcom / For The Chronicle
I have been meaning to write this article for over a month, and I just keep putting it off.
Just plain busy? Procrastinating? Avoiding the topic? Not considering myself an expert? Not wanting to publicly take a political stand?
Several of those, for sure.
I have avoided politics like the plague just about all of my life. Chalk it up to a childhood with my dad’s two older sisters being quite active politically and the “heated discussions” I remember hearing from the other room (yes, I grew up in an era where adults had their conversations and children were not privy to them) during large family gatherings. Thus, no candidate yard signs on my property, no attendance of political rallies, no campaign contributions, definitely keeping my political views to myself, and definitely keeping how I voted private.
But this topic eats on me.
Washington state has “earned” a reputation for being anti-agriculture, or to put it more mildly, unfriendly to agriculture. What the heck? Agriculture is the second largest industry in the economy of our state. We should be protecting and promoting agriculture, not attacking it and chasing it out of our state. We are losing family farms every single day. It has to stop if we want to eat healthy, wholesome food.
So, my beef? Gov. Jay Inslee worked hard to get his Climate Commitment Act (CCA) passed through the Legislature, and he succeeded, so we now have Title 70A.65 RCW.
And he did it in a pretty underhanded way in my opinion.
He used COVID-19 to lock people out of Olympia — he put up fences and denied us access to our legislators. Then, with his party in control, they pushed through the CCA with Gov. Inslee promising that it would not add more than pennies to gas prices, and he actually said it might drop the price of gas!
Yeah, right.
Gasoline in Washington spiked 50 cents, and everyone who works for a living has had to pay the price. They have had no alternative. This cap-and-tax, as it has become known, hits working people and hits them hard.
The other big hit? Agriculture.
When the bill was written, it included very specific language that agriculture would be exempted and the transportation of agricultural products would be exempted for five years to allow a transition period.
The Department of Ecology was to “adopt rules to implement the provisions of the program.” That is where things fell apart. The Department of Ecology did not do the job they were directed to do. There is no way to accurately estimate the dollar amount that farmers and ranchers in our state have paid in illegal taxes. I heard estimates in the $250 million range, possibly even higher.
One last nail in the coffin for a number of family farms in Washington.
But, it does not end there. It is not just farmers and ranchers who have paid the price. Every consumer who buys food has paid the price. I think that is pretty much most of us. Farmers and ranchers have to take the price they are given when they sell their product, so the price gouging hurts them, nobody else.
Oh, but it doesn’t really just end there, either. Truckers haul every bit of food you buy in stores. Truckers can and do raise their rates to haul. Fuel prices jumped 50 cents per gallon, so they raised their charges for hauling. So, the dominos start falling. The food costs more to haul, so the stores pay that higher price. The stores pay the higher price, so they raise the prices they sell at. The stores raise the prices they sell at, and that is where it hits everyone — you pay more for your groceries.
I wish that were the end of the story, but it isn’t.
When Ecology refused to develop the program for farmers, ranchers and truckers to be exempted, or at least get a refund, things took an interesting and scary turn. The Washington Farm Bureau (WFB), representing agriculture in our state, and the Washington Trucking Associations (WTA), representing truckers, worked together and sent a letter (it had some sort of legal name, I forget) to Ecology, which gave Ecology the opportunity to develop the program they were supposed to within a couple months.
Ecology refused.
So WFB and WTA then filed a case in superior court for a judgment and review of Ecology’s actions (or should I say lack of action?). A Thurston County Superior Court judge dismissed the case with no explanation. So, now an appeal has been filed to the State Supreme Court. I wonder how many years that will take? And how many more farm families will we lose?
This year, the Legislature acknowledged that they had been “misled” (I am trying to be nice) by agency people and that the law had not been implemented as they had intended. So, they passed a bill providing $30 million to refund those who had paid the unfair, illegal tax in 2023. A nice gesture, but too little too late for many. And what about the taxes paid in 2024 and beyond?
Concern No.1: Where did all those extra tax dollars go? It is a fuel tax, but the money does not go to road construction or maintenance. Sen. John Braun mentioned a few places those dollars have gone in his article in this paper on Sept. 7.
Concern No. 2: I have never understood this part of CCA. Those who create pollution can buy “credits” from those who don’t. How does that clean up the air? All it is doing is raising costs to every one of us. Those who pollute continue to pollute — they just buy their way out of it and then pass that on to every person in the form of higher prices for their products.
Concern No. 3: This needs to be fixed. The Legislature knows it needs to be fixed, but rather than step up to the plate and really do something about it by acting on Initiative 2117, the party in control backed down. They chose to let it go to the ballot this fall hoping the voters would not be educated enough to understand what CCA has done and vote yes on I-2117 to force them to do their job and write a better law.
That is what farmers want. Farmers do not want to get rid of CCA. They want to have it fixed.
So, my one public political stand of my lifetime. If you want the price of groceries and restaurant meals to go down, and if you want to keep family farms in Washington, then vote yes on I-2117.
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Maureen Harkcom is president of the Lewis County Farm Bureau. She can be reached at maureen.harkcom@gmail.com.