This weekend, Gov. Jerry Brown proclaimed that revenue from the cap-and-trade system under AB 32 will go toward the construction of California’s High Speed Rail project.
AB 32 was not intended to be a revenue raiser for the state of California. We dug up then-Assembly Speaker (and bill author) Fabian Nunez’ 2006 letter of legislative intent before the bill was passed, which made it unequivocally clear that revenues raised under the regulations were not to go beyond the administration of the AB 32 program. Have a look here:
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While more than 500 facilities struggle to pay for a costly cap-and-trade system in just the first year of the program, the State of California is already finding other ways to spend the money they weren’t supposed to collect in the first place.