As predicted, there was plenty of strident debate on HB1602 (creating a safe battery recycling stewardship program) before the House recessed for lunch. Mr. McGuire made an excellent 8-minute speech in favor of moving it to an interim study. I encourage everyone to listen to it, though I’m aware that asking for 8 minutes of someone else’s attention is a tall order. Keep in mind that those 8 minutes can be while making dinner, after dinner cleanup, folding laundry, or any other mundane task (hint, hint). I know most readers won’t, so here’s an excerpt to read right now.
“The stewardship program is required to write an annual report on its operations, but that report can be kept confidential by DES. So if we legislators or the public want to know how this program is going and the stewardship organization tells DES we’d like this to be confidential, it can be. Does that make sense? No, it doesn’t.”
Put another way, HB1602 shields records from 91A unless that issue was remedied by corrective language in the amendment passed before the whole House moved it forward to the Senate. It’s supposedly a very long amendment, and I haven’t read it.
Back to the move to interim study, I’d like to take a moment to praise my former opponent and rep, Linda Ryan, for voting correctly in that roll call. She “did a Jonah Wheeler,” so to speak, in being a minority of one among her peers in the enemy camp. As for Team Red members who voted the wrong way (NO on the interim study), I noticed a multitude of ENEMIES OF 91A. After hearing the McGuire speech, which included that confidentiality provision, it came as no surprise that the following 24 reps who voted for the RTK tax(HB1002) still supported HB1602.
- Burnham
- Coker
- Crawford
- Creighton
- Drye
- Foote
- Harrington
- King
- KUTTAB
- Ladd
- Lascelles
- Love
- Lundgren
- Lynn
- Clerk MacDonald
- Toupee MacDonald
- Milz
- Nelson
- Pearson(father and son)
- KP O’Brien
- Spilsbury
- Tierney
- L Walsh
If you read some of my earlier articles about bad actors on Team Red, you might already know that some of them voted the wrong way, banged in, or “took a walk” on other bills, like HB649(abolishing the sticker tax), and HB361(banning school mask policy), just to name a few.
I sadly predict that HB1604 will get through the whole senate because Team Red is full of bad actors on that side of the wall, also, but will the governor veto it? I’m guessing the answer depends on whether she can be convinced it’s a tax in disguise. Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see which committee (Energy & Natural Resources or Ways & Means) will give it the OTP.
