Another attempt to uphold TransAlta’s tax exemptions failed over the weekend in the Senate, and the bill containing a clause that some district lawmakers believe will send the state’s sole coal plant packing has passed the entire Senate and now moves over to the House.
The same amendment to the Senate’s tax bill presented to their Ways and Means Committee on Friday was brought before the entire Senate on Saturday. The change would allow the tax incentives, in place since 1997, to continue as long as the Centralia plant begins to make a shift away from coal, reduces the plant’s mercury emissions and gives quarterly updates to the state’s Department of Ecology showing its progress.
However, it was again voted down as it had been in committee the day before.
“We got a few votes, but we didn’t get enough,” said state Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester, about some Democrats who voted in favor of continuing the Canadian energy company’s tax breaks. “They’ve got so many votes that it’s hard to overcome them sometimes.”
Sen. Karen Fraser, D-Olympia, was one of the extra votes picked up from the other side of the aisle on Saturday.
The vice chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee initially put it before the budget panel the day before when it had been narrowly voted down on reconsideration. Fraser said on Friday that the amendment could still be resurrected during last-minute negotiations as the Legislature heads toward its scheduled conclusion on Thursday.
Closing off what some lawmakers have called a tax loophole would bring the state $10 million through 2011 to help close the state’s $2.8 billion budget deficit. Swecker said the price paid to get additional funding may not be worth it.
“It’s misleading to suggest that ending tax incentives, which the majority mistakenly calls ‘loopholes,’ is not raising taxes,” Swecker said in a statement. “Those incentives are adopted by the Legislature after much consideration to do good things for this state.”
The Senate’s tax bill, SB 6143, will now go before the House Ways and Means Committee.
