I can just imagine the Republicans, and a few Democrats, laughing it up at their lobbyist sponsored happy hours over the great job of gutting environmental protections on Earth Day. Thanks to Senator Ranker for doing his best to try and over ride this shoddy group of legislators, who couldn’t choose a more apt day to show their contempt for protecting and cleaning up the environment. Apparently the big lobby team fighting this was the petroleum producers. And so, another few years will go by with no real improvements to these issues.
The MCTA account has been routinely raided to provide money for the state’s general fund when legislators put together biennial operating budgets. Sen. Kevin Ranker, an Orcas Island Democrat and author of the version of the bill that lost on the Senate floor, contended that the bill passed by the Senate still raids the MTCA account for projects not related to hazardous substances cleanup. Ericksen disagreed.
The Republicans decided that instead of working on high priority cleanup, they would use some of the hard fought money to clean up ballfields and fairgrounds.
Read the whole sordid tale at
http://crosscut.com/2013/04/23/olympia-2013/114090/model-toxics-act-transparency-ranker-ericksen/
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