Republicans are 100% against tax increases… unless they can tax you hippies driving electric cars running on solar power.
Last year South Dakota Republicans finally let their rage at alternatives to fossil fuel overcome their aversion to taxes and approved 2021 House Bill 1053, which slaps a $50-a-year fee on sensible electric cars to make up for their evasion of gasoline taxes. (Man—why don’t we slap an extra $50 a year on those big coal-roller-trucks for evading the Clean Air Act and local noise ordinances?) Now Representative Mark Willadsen (R-11/Sioux Falls) wants to quintuple that tax. House Bill 1093 would raise our year-old electric car tax from $50 to $250.
I understand the argument that electric car owners use the highways and should pay for their upkeep just like everyone else. But I haven’t seen South Dakota Republicans propose quintupling anyone else’s taxes this year. Such a sudden leap in taxation disrupts personal budgets and a growing market. The Legislature should be promoting, not throttling, electric car manufacture, sales, and ownership.
HB 1093 comes before House Commerce and Energy this morning at 10 a.m. in Capitol Room 464. Also on today’s HCE agenda is Senate Bill 36, which subjects solar energy facilities to the same Public Utilities Commission decommissioning rules and financial obligations that the Legislature slapped on wind turbines in 2019. That law punishes the Tatanka Ridge Wind Farm with $5,000 a year in taxes on each wind turbine. The effort to include solar plants in that costly regulation sailed unopposed through the Senate.
Our Republican Legislature is keenly averse to increase taxes on pipelines and tailpipes, but SB 36 and HB 1093 indicate our Legislature is all for taxing the deployment of clean technology that would ween us from dependence on fossil fuels.
New Mexico’s unpaid legislature is the political inverse of my home state’s Republican-glutted lawgiving Koch machine.
https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/local/2022/01/21/new-mexico-legislative-session-clean-fuel-standard-sought/6580754001/
Just another form of subsidizing fossil fuel producers. They are more dependent on government subsidy and protectionism to any other industry – this includes Ag, which is not far behind.
ween?
Turnaround is fair play. A city in Californis is going to tax guns to pay for the millions they spend because of them.
Love your work. Keep spreading the truth.
The GOP has such a mindset against anything Joe Biden is for-hence their desire to tax extremely heavy burdens on anything taking the place of fossil fuel. Had that mindset prevaile when oil was discovered, we’d still be chasing the non-existent sperm whale on the seas. Idiots.
So exactly how would they tax out of state drivers of electric vehicles? Just set up a place in Elk Point and other likely spots and bill the drivers say 25 bucks or will they just overburden the in state drivers?
ALEC rears it’s serpent head again. This may present a problem for those who buy mailbox addresses in South Dakota to register and license their vehicles. An extra $250.00 per pop, at least, might be a hill not worth dying on.