>RGGI on the Ropes All Across New Jersey
(Burlington County -NJ) Sen. Diane Allen (R-07) and Sen. Mike Doherty (R-23), primary sponsor of the Senate repeal bill (S2250), held a press conference to announce the District 7 lawmakers’ decision to support the repeal effort.
The conference took place on the steps of one of Burlington’s abandoned businesses an old building that once was a bank and a restaurant. All around Burlington City you could see a multitude of shops with ‘closed’ signs on them signaling the poor economic circumstances of this community.
Sen. Allen, in her statement, explained that those closed businesses were the reason she decided to support the end of the RGGI Cap & Trade scheme.
“The real issue today,” said Sen. Allen, “is looking at all these empty storefronts down here on High Street in Burlington and wondering how much did the extra tax cause them to close; how much did this extra tax mean in determining if others didn’t fill in these buildings.”
The RGGI Cap & Trade tax will cost our state thousands of jobs in the future.The consequences for New Jersey became abundantly clear over the weekend when the Ocean Spray company announced that it would be relocating its plant in Burlington County right across the border in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
The RGGI Cap & Trade scheme and increasing utility costs were a major consideration for Ocean Spray in the company’s decision to leave New Jersey. Now, some 250 jobs will be leaving New Jersey for neighboring Pennsylvania which is not a participating state in the RGGI Cap & Trade scheme.
