N.Y. Assembly Will Consider Taxing Windfall Oil Profits
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ALBANY — State Democratic Assembly leaders plan to push for taxing windfall oil profits and using the receipts to expand help for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers to pay home heating bills next winter.
“Big oil is raking in record profits while New Yorkers are struggling,” the Assembly energy committee chairman, Kevin Cahill, said. “Today’s high prices at the pump are forcing us to make some difficult decisions. If fuel prices continue on this trajectory, as they are projected to, we are going to be facing a crisis this winter as people struggle to figure out how they are going to heat their homes.”
Speaker Sheldon Silver said he may bring the Assembly back to Albany after the regular legislative session to deal with energy. “Two things clear in this gasoline crisis are that, yet again, the American people are suffering while oil company profits continue to grow astronomically, and that our federal government, yet again, is failing to provide any viable solutions,” he said.
The windfall profits tax on big oil companies that sell their products in New York would be 2% of gross receipts. A new surcharge on gasoline importers would be 4% of the price per gallon above $2. Neither could be passed through to consumers, and the first $550 million from the windfall tax would double the existing Home Energy Assistance Program, according to Messrs. Silver and Cahill.
Their package of legislation would also ensure gas pumps accurately dispense the fuel consumers pay for, establish a Web site to disclose retail gas prices across the state, and allow retailers and distributors to buy and sell unbranded motor fuel.
The Republican Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, said earlier yesterday that an energy bill is among the priorities that should be publicly addressed, including Senate differences with the Assembly, as the legislative session winds down. Lawmakers were scheduled to finish the session on Monday.
“You fix the roof when the sun is shining,” Blair Horner, of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which supports the package, said. Home heating fuel costs will likely double this winter, he said, so it’s appropriate that the Legislature should double the funding for fuel subsidies and weatherization programs for the poor.
“People might freeze to death,” Mr. Horner said.
