2nd District Rep. J.T. Wilcox discusses support for Initiative 2117, salmon recovery | Jan. 19, 2024

hi I'm state representative JT Wilcox and this is the second week of the 2024 legislative session here in Olympia and as I said last time my job is a little different now I'm not the house Republican leader I step back I am a regular representative for the second district which means that I can really think hard not about what people across the state want but what people in the second district want and uh I think something that almost everybody's interested in is what's happening to these initiatives that uh were spread across the state um they all got uh the required number of signatures to show up here for the legislature and several of them have been certified now and they've become bills in the legislature and probably the one that people are most interested in has to do with the carbon tax that is added about 50 cents uh per gallon of gas which really affects people uh in the second district because so many of us commute uh I put in about 60 m a day I know that many of the people that I represent uh put on way more than that and this has made a big impact on our family budgets uh this initiative uh is uh under consideration now House Republicans offered motions uh in the chamber for it to be guaranteed that it gets a hearing uh that was voted down in a Partyline vote and what may happen is it will just be ignored here in the legislature by the majority and then it will just go to the vote uh in November and I think a lot of people in the second district are going to react very favorably to this and I think most people in the second district are a lot like me they're not anti-environment and they're concerned about climate change but they feel like this isn't a very effective way of addressing it but it's definitely among the most painful for people that heat their homes with uh propane like I do or natural gas and have to commute uh last week I talked about some bills that I'm working on that have to do with recovering salmon and you know I've said so many times this is not just about the salmon it's about everybody who's uh culture and identity is around fishing and hunting it is also critical because if you're involved in the building or the farming economy or the forestry economy you understand that the fact that we failed in terms of of uh preserving our salmon has made those jobs much more complicated and much more restricted as we try improve habitat if we can improve salmon we can improve the economy for all of the natural resource jobs that we have in the second district and across the state thanks so much everybody and I'll see you next week