A former economist for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has accused state officials of reprisals after he refused to lie about the financial impacts of the state’s new cap-and-trade program. Scott Smith has filed a whistleblower complaint claiming he was retaliated against by the State for not fudging the true cost of the cap-and-trade scheme on gas prices as Governor Jay Inslee was publicly accusing the fossil fuel industry of lying about the cost of the program.
Smith has worked for WSDOT for the past five years, forecasting fuel consumption, pricing, and revenues from gas taxes and fees. The 64-year-old has been a public-service economist for 35 years, and claims his career was ruined when he predicted that the impact of cap-and-trade would be an increase of 45-50 cents per gallon of gas purchased.
“I tried to do the right thing, and they eliminated my job,” Smith said. “I didn’t want to quit. I’m an economist. That’s the way I think. I’ve been damaged. I’m 64 years old. I’ve got nowhere to go. They left me no other choice.”
Cap-and-trade is a provision of the state’s Climate Commitment Act, which was passed in 2021. State leaders assured the citizens of the state that it would have little effect on gasoline prices.
“I don’t think it’s going to be noticeable,” Joel Creswell of the state’s Department of Ecology said.
“All in all, over time, we don’t think we’re going to see a big impact on prices at the pump, on customer prices,” said Luke Martland, implementation manager for the Ecology Department.
Smith claims he was pressured to not include the cap-and-trade surcharges by supervisors at WSDOT, notably Amber Coulson, WSDOT’s financial and planning manager, and Erik Hansen of the Governor’s Office of Financial Management.
“The fact that carbon taxes raise the cost of gasoline is a matter of 6th grade math. The incidence (who the cost ultimately falls on) is usually assumed to be 100 percent on the consumer,” Smith said in his whistleblower complaint. “This is the logic employed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Further, S&P displays a line-item cost per gallon in their Oil Price Information Report, a summary of wholesale fuel prices by location.”
In a series of emails he sent to himself to document the situation, Smith detailed the pressure he was under from supervisors.
An email from January 18 stated: “At 10:30 today (my temporary supervisor) called me and instructed me…not to write any emails about cap and trade because of a potential public records request. I was also instructed tentatively not to include any cap and trade adjustments in my gasoline price estimate.”
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