Legislative leaders from his own party slammed Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s Monday veto of segments of recently passed cap-and-trade and low-carbon fuels standard (LCFS) bills, threatening a legal challenge.

The partial vetoes focused on removing segments of the two bills that tied both efforts to the future passage of a transportation budget package. Those segments were key parts of internal Democratic compromises needed to gather enough party votes to pass both bills in April.

Inslee contends that legislative leaders disingenuously wrote the final language in both bills to try to prevent him from partially vetoing the links to a transportation budget package that does not specify a scheduled year to be addressed.

The LCFS bill (HB 1091) passed the Senate 26-23 and the House 54-43, while cap-and-trade (SB 5126) passed the Senate 27-22 and the House 54-43. Inslee signed both bills into law on Monday.

Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig (D) complained that the partial vetoes undermine the legislative compromises that allowed these bills to reach the governor’s desk.

“A key part of the legislative process is the negotiation and compromise that allow us to arrive at a version of a policy that can earn the votes to pass the legislature,” Billig said in a statement. “I agreed to support those compromises in order to pass these bills, and I will stay true to my word. I am concerned that undoing good faith negotiations will severely hurt our ability to reach agreement on important policies in the future.”

House Speaker Laurie Jinkins (D) said: “The [state] constitution provides the governor only limited powers to veto legislation. The governor’s partial veto today of … the clean fuel standard bill, reaches beyond his constitutional powers, and we will ask the Washington courts to again rule on the balance of legislative and executive branch powers.”

“This sets a chilling precedent and poisons the well for all future negotiations on virtually any tough issue,” said Sen. Mark Mullet (D), who swung his vote in favor of both bills after the link to a future transportation package was added to each. “If I have reservations about a policy but ultimately vote for a bill after my concerns are addressed, only to see that key aspect removed from the bill, why should I or any other legislator believe the same thing won’t happen on future bills?”

Republican leaders also criticized the partial vetoes. But their caucuses vehemently opposed both bills over the several years that it took to get the legislation passed.

In 2020, a Thurston County Superior Court judge ruled in the legislature’s favor when it challenged Inslee’s partial vetoes of individual lines and subsections in a bill. The legislature’s argument was that the Washington constitution allows the governor to only veto entire sections of a bill. The case is headed to the state Supreme Court.

“Maybe [Inslee] thinks the Supreme Court will overturn the lower court’s ruling,” Senate Minority Leader John Braun (R) said in a statement. “Whatever the reason, his subsection veto today is illegal. That alone says a lot about why our political system has checks and balances on one-person rule.”

‘Dissimulation’

In Monday letters to legislative leaders explaining his partial vetoes of both bills, Inslee said that the effective date of a bill is normally set out in its own single section, meaning it can be vetoed without affecting the rest of the bill. The governor said that the effective dates of the recent bills — whenever a transportation budget package is passed — are buried within bill sections covering other planks of the legislation.

Democrats, who control both chambers, have not set a date for when a transportation package would be addressed. That could happen in a special session this year, or in a short session in 2022, or in the regular biennial budgeting year of 2023, or potentially later. The main driver for passing a transportation budget package is that all 147 state legislators want transportation improvements in their individual districts. However, potential gas tax hikes normally complicate transportation budget talks.

Inslee wrote: “It strains the imagination to discern any reason for embedding into a single section a delayed effective date that impacts not just that one section, but also multiple additional sections, unless that reason is to prevent it from being vetoed. This type of legislative drafting demonstrates manipulation and a palpable attempt at dissimulation.”

Inslee added that a 1997 state Supreme Court decision ruled against this type of bill writing.

State Sen. Reuven Carlyle’s (D) cap-and-trade bill requires Inslee to appoint a task force by July 1 to lead brainstorming efforts on creating a cap-and-trade program administered by the Washington Department of Ecology. The program would go into effect when a transportation package is passed.

The task force will create a system to annually set the state’s total industrial carbon emissions, a cap that slowly decreases through the years. Four times a year, large emitters would submit bids in an auction for segments of that year’s overall limit and be allowed to emit that amount in greenhouse gases. Companies will be allowed to trade, buy and sell those allowances.

An environmental justice panel would be appointed to ensure low-income neighborhoods and communities of color would not be disproportionally hit with excess pollution.

The bill anticipates the auctions would raise several hundred million dollars that the state could allocate to disadvantaged communities.

Preliminary task force recommendations would be due by Nov. 1, with final recommendations ready to be sent to the legislature by Dec. 1.

Rep. Joe Fitzgibbon’s (D) bill requires that carbon emissions from gasoline and diesel fuel sold in Washington be cut by 10% below 2017 levels by 2028 and by 20% by 2035. It excludes emissions from fuel that is exported out of state or used by water vessels and railroad locomotives. The goals apply to overall vehicle emissions in the state and not to individual types of fuels. Northwestern Washington has five oil refineries. The rules go into effect Jan. 1, 2023.

Inslee has strongly pursued both concepts for years. His partial vetoes do not affect the bills’ main planks.