Over in the Legislature, two Assembly members are working valiantly to institute a oil severance tax in the rat wheel that is also known as our Legislature.  Round and round they go. How they hope to get 2/3, nobody knows. Yet, clearly it is important that the issue continue to come up in the Capitol’s conversation, so that much makes these bills worth the time.

As oil companies continue to reap record profits amid strained state revenues, a pair of Democratic lawmakers are hoping to tap into their deep pockets by installing an oil severance tax that could relieve growing pressures to cut more state services.

Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Long Beach, introduced a bill Monday called the Fair Share Act, that would impose a 10 percent oil severance fee on extractions from California wells to bring in $1.5 billion to the state’s coffers.

A similar bill that has already cleared one committee, by Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont, would impose a 9.9 percent fee, but would earmark the revenues to higher education funding. (CoCo Times 10/27/09)

But the fact is that there is never going to be 2/3 to get any oil severance tax out of the Assembly, let alone through both houses of the Legislature.

If the oil severance, or really any taxes, are going to be passed, it is going to require, for the time being, to go to the voters.  The oil severance tax is supported by majorities in most polls. It will not be an easy campaign, as we saw from Prop 87 a few years ago. The oil companies will spend whatever it takes to avoid paying oil severance.

Yet we cannot continue to be the one state that doesn’t charge oil severance. If there is going to be drilling in the state, the state should get something back to not only mitigate the costs of that drilling, but to also ensure that there is something left when the drilling is over. To ensure that when the oil companies leave the state, as is bound to happen, that we are left with an education system that can build innovators for the future.

It will take a strong case laid out by Democrats and other progressives, but as a Texan whose education was subsidized by such a tax, it is something that we have to do.

California was, once upon a time, the leader in offshore drilling. In fact, the first submerged oil wells was in the Santa Barbara Channel. Public acceptance can change rapidly when you spill 200,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean. And change it did.

In many ways, that day in 1969 was the time when the environmental movement came of age.  It had a real, tangible event to show the world of how quickly we can turn a once beautiful strip of coast into a toxic mess.  And since that spill, we have cleared our coast of offshore drilling. But in the heat of the “Drill, Baby, Drill” McCain candidacy, George W Bush revoked the executive order putting a moratorium on offshore oil drilling. States across the South have invited oil companies to explore their coastlines.

But the Pacific Coast had held the line against offshore drilling.  During the Drill, Baby, Drill heydays, Arnold Schwarzenegger swam against the tide of his own party, calling for the continued moratorium on off-shore drilling.

America is so addicted to oil that it will take years to ween ourselves from it. To look for new ways to feed our addiction is not the answer. Anyone who tells you this would bring down gas prices anytime soon is blowing smoke.

But with Arnold, any principle can be sacrificed for the all-mighty dollar. So when it became apparent the May 19 election was going to fail, he turned his attention to the Tranquillion Ridge Project. The Project claimed that it would bring $1.8 Billion into the general fund. Each step of the way, John Garamendi fought him from his post on the State Lands Commission.

Despite a setback from that commission, Arnold still included the project in his proposals for the budget. Today, the LA Times called the plan out and provided a better method of attaining revenues:

Admittedly, the state could use the money. But that’s not a good enough reason to subvert the authority of the Lands Commission, sell California’s coastline in exchange for empty promises, ignore the wishes of Santa Barbara residents and dismiss the outcome of a long process of analysis and public hearings. The Lands Commission, in fact, was created in 1938 to bring more transparency to the awarding of oil leases after a scandal involving the Department of Finance.

If the governor really wants more oil money, there’s a better way: He could resurrect a plan he introduced last year calling for a 9.9% tax on crude oil extracted in the state. California is the only state in the union that doesn’t collect such an extraction tax, and Schwarzenegger estimated in November that it would bring in roughly $1.2 billion in the next fiscal year — dwarfing the $100 million that would be generated by the Plains Exploration project. (LAT 6/8/09)

A resolution advocating for oil severance made it through the CDP resolutions process, and such a proposal is now official Democratic Party policy.  If the Governor is serious about fixing the budget, that is where he would be pushing the Legislative Republicans. 70% of Californians support an oil extraction tax of some sort, yet the Republicans are still blocking the will of the people.

Drill, Baby, Drill is a recipe for disaster in both good and bad economic times. We should not be coompromising our goals of a clean and sustainable energy future for a few hundred million dollars.  I’ll be working to provide more depth on this issue, but in the mean time, consider emailing your legislator or joining John Garamendi’s facebook group to support the State Lands Commission’s position against drilling. We simply cannot afford another to turn our backs on 1969, the devastating consequences of a spill are just not worth the price.