Arnold backs port container fee

LA Daily News ^ | 12/21/07 | Kristopher Hanson

[NormsRevenge]

LONG BEACH - Days after port authorities approved a $35 environmental fee on containers shipped through Southern California's harbors, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that he would support a similar fee at the state level.

Schwarzenegger, who previously said container fees would hurt the economy, now considers them an option to help fund trade-related infrastructure and environmental programs.

"I think fees are good; we just have to work it out with the various stakeholders," Schwarzenegger said during a visit with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr.

"It's extremely important that we find a way to create economic development and increase trade, but at the same time take care of our environment."

The governor's policy shift comes as California grapples with an ailing goods-movement infrastructure and growing health problems linked to diesel pollution.

The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, which together handle more than 40 percent of the nation's international trade, are listed by air quality regulators as the largest fixed source of air pollution in California.

After vetoing a proposed $30 container fee in 2006, the governor in September withheld his signature from a similar bill, saying he would work during the legislative off-season to develop a program that allows private industry to help fund infrastructure repairs.

Since then, Schwarzenegger has worked with state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, to drum up support for the bill, which would assess a $30 fee on every container handled at the ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles and Oakland.

The estimated $500 million generated annually would be spent on infrastructure projects such as rail improvements and programs that reduce the health impact of air pollution caused by the transportation industry.

Health studies link diesel pollution from trains, trucks and freight ships to increased asthma, cancer and heart disease rates.

[SierraWasp]

"Arnold disembles in California while Bush takes it national."

Like I said yesterday about the flap over the signing of the energy bill and CA being blocked by the fed EPA from jumping the shark about Gorebull worming...
It's Bevis and Butthead at best and Dumb and Dumber at worst!!!

[calcowgirl]

The Times. London (UK): Nov 20, 1999. pg. 14 For the time being, Arnold is boss in Arnold's world, and a backward glance at his career shows why. Through sheer force of will he has become the supreme, magnified embodiment of the American Dream. He lives with Shriver and the kids - two boys, two girls - in Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades. The compound consists of several houses and rolling gardens hidden from the street by towering eucalyptus trees. There is an Austrian room without any Hollywood memorabilia, in deference to a childhood when LA might as well have been the moon, and there is a swimming pool ringed by busts of Lenin and Stalin. He has said he hates losers, but he clearly admires grim determination.Variety, May 5, 2003 v390 i12 pS32(7) Schwarzenegger’s sprawling office within his company, Oak Prods., contains busts of Lenin, Reagan and John E Kennedy (whom Schwarzenegger admired, he says, even before marrying Maria Shriver, JFK’s niece). A group of bodybuilders from St. Petersburg brought the 3-foot Lenin head into the U.S. after the Soviet Union dissolved and presented it to Schwarzenegger. The next year, they wanted to top themselves.

“When they unveiled (a bust of) Stalin, I said no. I had to explain to them why,” he says. “Lenin was not as evil. He was just in the right place at the right time. But Stalin was evil. He was a dictator beyond belief. There were questions of who was more evil, Hitler or him.”

For the record, there are no plans for a Saddam Hussein statue in the Oak offices. “Saddam didn’t start anything great,” he says. “But Lenin started communism and the whole Karl Marx thing. He started something that lasted 70-something years.”

[SierraWasp]

See #41, please...

[ElkGroveDan]

Remember when some CA entity tried to tax satellites in orbit?

It was the LA County Assessor, a liberal Democrat.

[DoughtyOne]

I certainly agree.

[DoughtyOne]

Wonderful. /s Thank you. Amazing...

[ElkGroveDan]

I assume you were listening to Tom Sullivan today? I had to run a shopping errand and he was going on about Rudy being the only one who can beat Hillary and what a great leader Rudy is, yada,yada, yada.

Had to stop at the carwash to vacuum the barf off my dashboard.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Well, why not haul them ALL down to the borderand stack 'em up? Put a smooth finish on the Mexican side so they can't climb over, and voila! Instant border barrier, two or three containers high!

Excellent idea! Better fill them up with concrete. Wouldn't do much good if you could blow torch your own door in the side.

[SierraWasp]

I missed his first hour. I see I din’t miss a danged thang!!! Sorry for the mess in your car, but I certainly understand how it came about!!!

[Arthalion]

IF only it actually worked that way. The vast majority of inbound freight in the western US comes ashore in California, and all of those ports, rail lines, and support roads were paid for by the California state government...i.e., us taxpayers.

Here are the way things work in CALIFORNIA.

A piece of land is sitting fallow. The government sees a better use for it and zones it commercial.

A developer comes along and proposes a large industrial business. The developer promises hundreds of high paying jobs, but demands that the state subsidize his construction costs, waive property taxes for the next 20 years, and connect the site to local road and rail systems under the guise of "improving the regional economy".

The government responds by caving completely to the developers demands, using a combination of bond money and tax revenue to build a "private" business.

The business is a success, but the owners toss their original promises and employ half the workers they had originally predicted, at one third the wage. 4 illegal aliens are given jobs for every American it employs.

The local citizens get sick of subsidizing a business that is a drain on the local economy, and demand that the business be charged fees to counterbalance lost income tax revenues.

The company whines about "California Socialism", packs up, and moves to Nevada.

The illegals all start collecting unemployment insurance, and the Americans start whining to the local government about the lack of local jobs all over again.

[Arthalion]

By the way, anyone questioning this can simply look at the Crows Landing airbase issue in northern California right now. The old airbase has been sitting abandoned for over a decade, so the local county government went in search of a developer to do something with it. A large develoment company came in and is proposing the development of a large "inland port" rail-linked with Oakland. Rather than trucks picking up their containers at the docks, the freight will be dropped onto rail cars and shipped 50 miles east to a transfer station near I-5. The objective is to get container truck traffic out of the Bay Area freeways, some of the most congested in the world.

On the surface it sounds like a good idea...until you get into the details. The developers want a land tax exemption on the site, they want the state to foot the bill for rail upgrades, they want the county to cover development costs, and they want a nearby city to cover all water and sewage issues at no expense to the developer. In return, the developer will "build" the inland port to stimulate the local economy and create "many" high paying local jobs. Of course, the developer can't identify how many or what his definition of "high paying" is.

And yes, the governments are on board completely.

[Calvin Locke]

Thanks, I thought it was a county, but I didn’t commit that detail to my vast store of useless information.

[calcowgirl]

Great recap! (Sad, but true)

[Alberta's Child]

This wasn't just a reflexive "tax" that was instituted in California by the Schwarzenegger administration. This was done specifically to help the area around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach cope with the growing volume of truck and rail traffic associated with the increasing U.S. imports from Asia. Most of these containers are being moved to places elsewhere in the U.S., but it's California that's been forced to deal with the traffic congestion, air quality problems, etc. that comes along with the imports.

It's worth noting that a similar container fee has been proposed in various ports on the East Coast in recent years, but it never gets implemented here because there are so many different states along this coast that any one port would place itself at a competitive disadvantage by imposing this kind of fee on its own.

At some point in the not-too-distant future I expect this kind of fee to be imposed on a NATIONAL level.

[Vince Ferrer]

It makes no sense from a cost-effectiveness standpoint to return empty containers, and the U.S. doesn’t export enough to fill up more than a fraction of them. I remember reading something about plans to recycle them as housing material.

Empty containers are repositioned constantly throughout their service lives, which is about ten years. A considerable amount of planning goes into minimizing the times the container is shipped with no cargo, but it is a well known and accepted cost of doing business. The only time containers stack up and are disposed of is at the end of their service life. America is the largest exporter of fresh air in the world.