Berkeley’s Gas Stove Tax

A court blocked the city’s ban, but Plan B is to kill them with taxes

WSJ editorial. 

"Democrats insist they aren’t coming for gas stoves, but look at how the People’s Republic of Berkeley is trying to tax them into obsolescence. What does Kamala Harris think of her hometown’s plan to soak businesses and renters?

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last year struck down the city of Berkeley’s ordinance that sought to ban natural gas hookups in new buildings, finding it conflicted with federal law. But Berkeley’s climate obsessives are trying to do an end-run with a November voter initiative that would tax owners of larger buildings for consuming gas.

“It is the intent of the People to disincentivize obsolete natural gas infrastructure and associated greenhouse gas emissions in existing commercial and large residential buildings, thereby reducing the environmental and health hazards produced by the consumption and transportation of natural gas,” the initiative says.

“The People” in power want to do this by imposing an excise tax on commercial and multifamily apartment buildings that starts at $2.96 per therm consumed. That’s roughly twice the U.S. average residential retail price for natural gas. It would add up to about $180 a month for a typical household’s gas consumption.

While the measure supposedly forbids building owners from raising rents to offset the tax, a city report warns that building owners could nonetheless pass along the tax to tenants “either at the time of lease renewal or, for price-controlled units, adjustments during times of vacancy.” State and city buildings would be exempt, naturally.

The goal is to coerce building owners to replace gas with electric appliances even though doing so is costly and in many cases impractical. Housing wouldn’t be so expensive—Berkeley’s average rent is $3,200 a month—if progressives weren’t constantly trying to tax and restrict development.

A mere majority of Berkeley voters need to approve the gas tax, which may be easy to secure in a city where only 4% of voters are registered Republicans. Under a voter initiative that Gov. Gavin Newsom sued to block from this November’s statewide ballot, such a tax would have required at least two-thirds support.

Berkeley voters will have to eat their own cooking if the gas tax passes, but crackpot coercion in California tends to spread across the country, including to Congress."