AB 32, the bill that is causing much of the upset here in Cathey’s Valley, is going to ballot this November. It has not been well excepted, and so an initiative, written by Rep. Dan Logue and Ted Costa, to stop the bill has already collected and turned in 800,000 signatures. I was doing a little reading on the bill this morning and found some frightening figures.

I read that economic advisors have found that AB32 would increase the costs of natural gas by 8 percent; increase the cost of a new home by $50,000; cost $3.7 billion a year more for gasoline and diesel; raise the cost of a new car $1000 to $3000; increase basic household costs of $818 to more than $9300 per year per family. These higher costs would lead to job losses in the range of $76,000 per year to more than $1.6 million per year depending on a new tax on carbon rates. According to CARB's Economic and Allocation Advisory committee there would be a loss of $250 billion to $350 billion over 10 years. In all fairness I must say that those for the plan say that the savings would out weigh the costs. I think everyone should research it for themselves.

I was reading a letter from the planning department explaining why AB32 had to be adopted. They used words like the "attorney general strongly recommends" immediate implementation of AB32. That doesn't sound like we are in any immediate danger, so instead of rushing into this maybe we should wait and see how this whole thing plays out.

I personally would like to conserve and save for some solar alternatives, however I am not excited about the government having more power to dictate our actions. I don't want to lay these expensive burdens on the backs of our young people trying to build new homes and start new businesses. I certainly don't want our county or state to have to pay more personnel to enforce their new restrictions, and I don't want more laws and their interpretations to fight about in expensive court battles. Let's work together rather than give over more control to the already top heavy government.

Victoria Trujillo