KENT, Wash. — Opponents of Washington’s fledgling cap-and-trade program, which the state refers to as cap-and-invest, have delivered 418,399 signatures to the secretary of state’s office in a push to repeal the program.

The petition needs 324,516 valid signatures by Dec. 29 to advance to the Legislature. If lawmakers take no action on the petition, it will go to a November 2024 referendum.

“We’re going to give the voters a chance to vote it down,” Brian Heywood, a King County hedge fund manager leading the effort, said at a Nov. 21 press conference in Kent in front of a U-Haul trailer containing boxes of signatures. Heywood is providing more than 80% of the petition drive’s budget, according to the website of Let’s Go Washington, an organization Heywood has bankrolled to back the repeal effort and other initiatives.

Administered by the state’s Department of Ecology, Washington’s cap-and-invest program went into effect at the start of this year, requiring carbon-emitting entities to participate in auctions to bid on allowances that permit them to pollute. Opponents blame the program for the state’s high gasoline prices, saying oil companies are passing on their compliance costs at the gas pump. (See Cap-and-trade Driving up Washington Gasoline Prices, Critics Say.)

Smokestack emissions from Washington’s five oil refineries are exempt from the program, while the gasoline they produce is not.

‘Dead on Arrival’

The petition “will be dead on arrival,” state Sen. Joe Nguyen (D), chairman of the Senate’s Environment, Energy and Technology Committee, told NetZero Insider. The initiative will have to go through his committee before getting a wider hearing in the Senate.

Heywood said public ballot measures supporting a cap-and-trade program were defeated before the Legislature passed the cap-and-invest program in 2021. “The Legislature said ‘F U’ to the voters and [it] is saying ‘F U’ again,” Heywood said in response to the fact that a Democratic-controlled Legislature would be hostile to the petition.

Nguyen said the petitioners are unaware of the cap-and-invest program’s benefits. Also, he said, the 2021 law is the result of compromises reached among environmentalists, advocates for disadvantaged communities and the business community, including some in the oil industry. Nguyen also contended the petition’s backers are climate change deniers.

“Of course, climate change exists. Of course, humans cause climate change. I’m just not a member of the mother-breathing Church of Gaia,” Heywood said. He later added: “This money is going to the political friends and allies of the governor. To be honest, this is a money grab.”

In an email to NetZero Insider, Gov. Jay Inslee spokesperson Mike Faulk said: “As for the false claim about how auction revenue is spent, if he can’t back it up, then it’s not even worth printing. We’ve been more than happy to share with folks where the funds are going.”

The cap-and-invest program is on track to raise almost $2 billion in 2023. So far, $300 million has been appropriated to 188 projects. These include intermingling solar projects with farmlands, adding climate change to urban growth planning, climate change projects for the state’s tribes, capturing methane from landfills, installing solar panels on nonpublic buildings, dealing with child asthma in the SeaTac area, building infrastructure for electric vehicles, building a hybrid fuel/electric ferry, and overhauling ferry docks and terminals to handle electric ferries.

Faulk said 43% of cap-and-invest revenue is earmarked for poor and overburdened communities, with an additional 7% going to the state’s tribes.

The cap-and-invest petition is part of a Let’s Go Washington package of six petitions. Heywood said the organization is close to collecting 400,000 signatures for them. A standard rule of thumb in collecting initiative signatures is to gather far more than needed because the secretary of state’s office will throw some out because they are not valid.

Other petitions include calling for repealing a new capital gains tax on people earning at least $250,000 in capital gains. Another wants to forbid any state or local income tax in Washington, which has neither. No state income tax has been proposed for a long time.