May 2013

Carbon tax summer!

I’m happy to report that CarbonWA has hired its first employee! Claire Meints has been a terrific volunteer activist and she’s going to spend this summer in Seattle focusing on the campaign. I’ve got a bunch of time to contribute to the campaign this summer also, so we should make great progress… and don’t be surprised if future updates to this list-serv come from Claire ?
On the policy front, I’m doing some research on regressivity and the state tax system and came across this recommendation to eliminate the $400m sales tax on construction labor from the 2002 Gates Commission report. The Gates report is a decade old so I don’t know the current status of this issue—if you know anything please let me know—but if it’s still an active issue then it might be a good element to include in our effort. Comments welcome!