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Opponents of Proposition 37 held a news conference in front of the Chevron refinery in Richmond today to urge voters to defeat the proposition they say is financed by big businesses.  

Representatives from the California Public Interest Research Group, Clean Water Action and the American Lung Association were joined by Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington today to call attention to the proposition, which they say would protect certain industries from paying for any pollution or sicknesses they cause.  

Linda Wiener, with the American Lung Association, said the proposition could pass unnoticed by voters who might end up supporting it unknowingly in next Tuesday's election. 

According to the opponents, the proposition is backed primarily by big business – including the alcohol, tobacco and oil industries – because it would make it harder for legislators to impose monetary penalties or mitigation fees, collected to pay for clean-up or other mitigation costs for activities that cause harm to people or the environment. 

The proposition would amend the state’s constitution to redefine those mitigation fees as taxes.  

Under such a designation, the state legislature would have to come up with a two-thirds vote to raise the amount collected, while a two-thirds vote of the people would be needed to increase the taxes at a local level. 

Under the current mitigation fee designation, only a majority is needed by either the legislature or the public to increase the fees. 

According to opponents of the proposition, the tax designation would make it virtually impossible to collect money from the targeted industries for community programs, and the cost would be passed on to taxpayers. 

Sarah Dahan of Clean Water Action said, “It is irresponsible that the oil industry would rather shift the cost of their own clean-up to the taxpayer.” 

In accordance with Tuesday’s Halloween celebrations, Councilman Worthington compared the proposition, named the “Two Thirds Vote Preservation Act,” as a razor inside of an apple. 

Worthington said, “As our children trick or treat for nickles and dimes, the oil and chemical industries are attempting to trick the republic to get them millions of dollars in exemptions from paying regulatory fees protecting the environment.” 

Austin Lee, spokesman for the campaign in support of the proposition, said the idea that the taxes would be shifted over to taxpayers in inaccurate. 

He noted that the California Taxpayers Association and the California Chamber of Commerce are among the co-sponsors of the proposition, showing, he said, that the coalition’s position is wrong. 

“All we want to do is clearly define what a tax is and what a fee is,” Lee said. 

Lee said the proposition is drafted so that those who are  

causally responsible for incidents that compromise public safety are held accountable for their actions. 

But the current system, which Lee said targets small firms that may not be causally responsible for incidents, puts businesses at a competitive disadvantage. 

If anything, he said, taxpayers are currently at a disadvantage with the system that “opens the floodgates” on taxes disguised as fees. 

“The consumers are actually going to bear the burden of such  

increases,” he said.