Near-Fatal Blow for PA Carbon Tax – Commonwealth Court Blocks 4-1
In the end, Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court was not fooled by the Democrat left's attempt to rename a tax as a fee to circumvent the necessary approval needed by the state legislature in approving taxes as provided for by the state constitution. We're referring to the illegal attempt by former PA Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019 to force the state into a carbon tax scheme called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which would slap a new (very high) tax (i.e., "fee") on electricity produced by coal- and gas-fired power plants, forcing them out of business in favor of unreliable "renewable" energy sources (see Gov. Wolf Goes Bonkers: EO Destroying Gas-Fired Elec, Carbon Tax). After exhausting all other possibilities, in 2022, energy producers and PA Senate Republicans sued to block Wolf's plan (see PA Legislators File Court Challenge to Block $2.6B RGGI Carbon Tax). Yesterday, they won that lawsuit in Commonwealth Court, blocking PA from participating in RGGI without legislative approval. Why is this decision a "near-fatal" blow for RGGI in PA and not just fatal?
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