CCA Suit Dismissed Pt 1
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. Since the beginning of 2023, farmers and truckers of agricultural goods have been paying a Climate Commitment Act fuel tax that by law they are exempt from.
Since then, ag groups have been pushing for a fix to this exemption problem, with little help from the Department of Ecology …
ELSEY … “So, as a result, Washington Farm Bureau and Washington Trucking Association joined together to file suit against the Department of Ecology, not to recover the lost fees, but to ask a judge to compel Ecology to reopen rulemaking and to force Ecology to implement the terms of the law that currently exist.”
But Bre Elsey, the Farm Bureau’s Director of Governmental Affairs, says the judge dismissed the suit …
ELSEY … “Judge Lanese never gets into the details of why he dismisses the case. He just says that he agrees with the Department of Ecology’s brief. But typically, what a judge will do is describe what exactly he thought was defensible on behalf of the respondent and he never does.”
So, Elsey says moving forward …
ELSEY … “That puts us in a tricky position as to how to move forward in what exactly did Ecology do or say that made the judge believe that they were in compliance with the law because everything about the law shows that they are currently not.”
Tune in tomorrow for the Washington Farm Bureau’s alternative to a lawsuit.
Elsey says they’re urging all who support their local farmers to join the Farm Bureau in voting YES on I-2117 this
November. Without your help, food costs will continue to rise and local farms will continue to disappear.
