Municipalities offered an olive branch

Posted September 24, 2008 by Sacha Peter - Link
Category: News

The government is (correctly, from a political standpoint) using this Federal election cycle to mitigate future negative news.

First is a press release (and details) concerning the partial mitigation of the senior executive pay issue. This forces Carole James and the NDP to use a more abstract and less politically catchy argument of “The pay scale still has a maximum of forty-something percent”. The deputy to the Premier, Jessica Macdonald, is also spending a few after-tax dollars of opportunity cost to prevent her from being a target of the NDP.

Today, there is the offering of an olive branch at the Union of the BC Municipalities (UBCM) meeting, where the province is offering to refund municipalities’ carbon taxes in exchange for the municipalities becoming carbon neutral by 2012.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out during the municipal election cycle - my quick take is that the province imposed a cost on the municipalities (via carbon taxes, of which the “revenue neutral” portion will not touch the local governments), and now the province is saying they will effectively take away the costs (in the form of a grant) as long as they are carbon neutral.

The only way I can see municipalities achieving the objective of carbon neutrality is a combination between operation and capital expenditures, but the bulk of the operational side will presumably by via purchasing carbon credits. Obviously, the municipalities have to model such costs - if it costs more to be carbon neutral than what they’re paying in carbon taxes, then there’s no point in doing this. If it costs less, then they will do it.

There was little detail in the press release and also no numbers associated with the cost to the province or the municipalities, so this one will play out further.