The hidden truth about the Democrats' latest environmental scheme

hi it's State Representative Jim Walsh here in the wings of the floor of the House in Olympia i want to talk for a minute about a bad bill that we debated last night into this morning or I don't know i was losing track these days but it was a late night debate on Senate Bill 5284 which is a product packaging bill it puts a bunch of regulations on how products consumer products are packaged and sold in Washington state it affects primarily food packaging but also other consumer products anything you might buy at the store uh there was a lot that was wrong with this proposal but the biggest problem part of it was that it creates a thing called a PRO producer responsibility organization this is a a nonprofit supposedly non-governmental organization that operates off to the side of the state government but is in charge of basically regulating and managing a packaging recycling scheme that will be run sort of in conjunction with the state department of co ecology the relationship between this nongovernment PRO and the state agency the Department of Ecology is something we're seeing a lot in Washington state public policy recently similarly under the climate commitment act various non-government organizations nos have sprung up that help move climate commitment act money out into grants and other uses and there's a great concern that these NOS skim off too much taxpayer money handling these grants and projects with this packaging deal this PRO that's set up does the same it it administers this mandatory recycling program but can skim off as an administrative overhead cost uh an undetermined amount of money and this pro operating to the side of the state government may be handling up to two or even $300 million a year of recycling related fees and expenses and how much will they skim off to hire politically connected friends of the governor or of the state attorney general or of the speaker of the house it's all murky and gray there's no determination clearly in the law and the worst part the proposal heading toward law explicitly exempt this organization from antirust law both state and federal antirust law this is bad this is a shadow agency operating in shadowy circumstances with very few oversightes or controls over what it's doing it's a recipe for crony capitalism and in my opinion corruption this is not good public policy but it's a drift we've been seeing in things we're doing here in Washington state and it needs to stop we will continue to oppose this Senate Bill 5284 and we will try to insist on transparency and accountability in state agencies and in NOS that operate next to state agencies that's it for this update i wish I had better news maybe next time we'll have uh a more optimistic approach but for now be well and stay strong