Sometimes it’s hard to keep your story straight.
Like daffodils at Spring, legislators rise every year to wag their fingers at the price of gasoline.
First to the bar this year is Senator Mark Leno, who proposes legislation to create a bureaucracy to investigate “whether fuel price manipulation is occurring” by “comparing real time prices to expected prices based on modeling output.”
In other words, we’ll finally have a state agency that can tell the Legislature what fuel prices should be, rather than what the sign at the gasoline station says.
But to what end is all this worrying?
Supporters of Sen. Leno’s legislation include consumer organizations that presumably don’t like high gasoline prices. But supporters also include Environmental Defense Fund, which insists that, “(I)f the state is serious about addressing climate change and reducing dependence on oil, it must make sure that companies can’t manipulate gas prices in order to undermine the long-term viability of common sense approaches.”
Since reducing dependence on oil requires a higher price of gasoline, is EDF concerned that oil companies will “manipulate” their prices to provide consumers with cheaper gasoline?
The horror.