With the FY27 budget season winding down, NJBIA issued a statement today equating any vote by lawmakers for the Climate Superfund/Polluters Pay Act  as a vote for a new tax on New Jersey residents during an affordability crisis, as well as an endorsement of one of the most anti-business laws in state history.

“While activists continue to sell the idea of the bill as a $50 billion free lunch, we should all expect our elected officials to not be fooled by that,” said NJBIA Deputy Chief Government Affairs Officer Ray Cantor.

“Let’s call this bill for what it really is: An unconstitutional attempt to  retroactively penalize businesses that legally provide an essential product used by everyone – including the very people supporting this bill.

“It will raise energy costs for every New Jersey household and business over the next 20 years. It will destroy jobs and investment at our two remaining  refineries and other connected businesses within the industry. And it will set a damning precedent for all businesses in New Jersey: That you can work within the law and live up to your permits and still be retroactively penalized.

“As businesses and jobs continue to leave the state and we remain mired in an affordability crisis, it is incumbent upon our leaders to ask themselves: Is this what we want New Jersey to be? A place where ideology takes priority over costs, jobs, our future job creation and millions of dollars in legal challenges,” Cantor said.

An analysis by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform, which has been previously cited in NJBIA testimony, finds the bill’s added energy and related costs will amount to nearly $14,000 per household over the course of 20 years.

In a recently published paper titled “You Can’t Tax the Past Without Pricing the Present: The Hidden Costs of Climate Superfund Laws,” University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Jonathan Klick fully dismissed the idea that Climate Superfund laws imposing billions of dollars retroactively on companies won’t raise customers’ costs.

“Politicians excel in promising free lunches,” Klick wrote. “The introductory economics lesson that has never been falsified is that those free lunches always come with a cost.”

“The arguments that these costs will not be passed on are beyond flawed,” Cantor added. “They do not account for the fact that 14 states, and perhaps more, are considering similar legislation.

“They ignore the fact that it is likely that these assessments will be imposed again and again in the future, and they falsely equate the economics of worldwide prices for a barrel of oil to the cost at the pump.”

Ironically, supporters of the bill have acknowledged that shareholders of the penalized companies will be impacted.

“Guess who that is – the middle class,” Cantor said. “The inflammatory argument that fossil fuel companies can easily pay for these charges out of their profits misses the point of who has invested in these companies through their pensions and 401(k)s.”

Cantor also noted that sponsors have not quantified the following in support of the bill:

• How much New Jersey has contributed to global emissions

• How much users of the products contribute to global emissions compared to those who extracted the raw material

• How much fossil fuels have improved the quality of life over the past 100-plus years.

“These are all imperative concerns, particularly as states do not have authority to impose liability for global atmospheric conditions under the federal Clean Air Act,” Cantor said.

“So, it is time for lawmakers to understand the negative consequences of this bill. We need them to instead improve the state’s affordability, jobs, economy and business climate are at stake.”