Thursday, May 12, 2011

House Bill 86 Kept in Committee

House Bill 86, which would have pulled Delaware out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), failed to make it out of committee today. After nearly two hours of spirited and sometimes heated debate, the House Energy Committee voted against moving the bill to the House floor.

Actually there were two votes. A vote to release the bill to the House floor failed 3 to 4. Then a motion to table the bill passed 4 to 3.

The room was packed with environmental advocates and opponents of RGGI, who were led by the Caesar Rodney Institute and the 9/12 Delaware Patriots. Lots of numbers were thrown around, and the opponents warned of the enormous costs of participation in RGGI. But these dire predictions of high costs have not yet come true. Last year RGGI cost residential customers an average of 38 cents a month, only 0.285 percent of the average bill.

2 Comments:

Anonymous kavips said...

For those of us who could not attend, would you mind documenting who voted for and who voted against?

2:23 PM, May 14, 2011  
Blogger Tom Noyes said...

The two votes were 4 to 3 along party lines. Debra Heffernan, Quinn Johnson John Kowalko and Dennis E. Williams voted agianst HB 6. Harvey Kenton, Nick Manolakos and William Outten voted for.

9:29 PM, May 14, 2011  

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