Letter to the editor: Transportation and Climate Initiative misguided

Sen. Kim Ward’s op-ed “Now is not time for more taxes on electric, gas consumers” (Aug. 29, TribLIVE) includes concerns about the Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI).

TCI, being pushed hard by environmental groups, creates a cap-and-trade program in which companies that sell gasoline and on-road diesel fuel would pay for “credits” if they would want to distribute fuel over an emissions limit set by a regional entity.

As Ward accurately describes, it is simply a tax on consumers who drive.

The estimated tax for the first year of the program is 17 cents a gallon — on top of Pennsylvania’s second highest gas tax in the nation. This would burden Pennsylvanians who commute long distances to work and businesses relying on transportation to distribute goods. At the end of the day, we will all pay the price.

TCI would cost the state’s economy an estimated $12 billion over 10 years. Gov. Tom Wolf has not yet signed on to TCI. He and other Northeast governors are to make that decision this fall.

I urge Wolf not to sign on, and I ask Ward and other lawmakers to continue to oppose this misguided program.

Don Bowers

Buffalo Township

The writer is motor fuel chair for the Pennsylvania Petroleum Association.