West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey is urging Maryland’s House and Senate leadership to table a bill that targets out-of-state coal producers, driving up costs for everyone and raising serious constitutional questions.
The Coal Transportation Fee and Fossil Fuel Mitigation Fund (Coal Dust Cleanup and Asthma Remediation Act, SB 882) has been introduced in the Maryland General Assembly. On average, transporting coal costs $18.77 per short ton—the bill would nearly double that cost by imposing an additional $13-per-ton fee on all coal transported into the state of Maryland.
Maryland doesn’t produce much of its own coal, but the Port of Baltimore is the second-largest coal exporting port in the country—and every bit of that coal would be subject to this added fee, driving up costs and particularly hurting coal producing states like West Virginia.
“[A] State cannot fill its coffers at the expense of hard-working Americans miles away in other States who work to keep our lights on and houses warm,” Attorney General McCuskey wrote in the letter to Maryland’s Senate president and House speaker. “The Bill inappropriately targets and extracts large sums of money from energy suppliers to bankroll Maryland’s budget.”
Even though the Bill is called the “Coal Dust Cleanup and Asthmas Remediation Act,” nearly all the money would go to fill Maryland’s “Fossil Fuel Mitigation Fund” with just 2% set aside to actually address asthma treatment for communities impacted by coal.
West Virginia is currently leading the fight against similar legislation in New York, and the letter explains why this Bill introduced in Maryland would likely not withstand judicial scrutiny, either.
Original source can be found here.