UPDATED 12:18 PM Includes comparison of bills to the new substitute amendment
MacIver News Service – [Madison, Wisc.] We’ve just received word from State Representative Spencer Black that the revised bill initially formed as an outgrowth the Governor Jim Doyle’s Global Warming Task Force will be unveiled at 11am today.
“I think the substitute amendments will include these key elements.” said Black (D-Madison) in a conversation with MacIver News Service. “They might not be as strong as I would have liked, but it will be a strong bill.”
Black believes the compromises are realistic, and said, “I expect the Assembly and Senate Committees to pass identical subs.”
Black, co-chair of the Special Committee on Clean Energy Jobs, said the the most important items in the proposal were a 25 percent renewable portfolio standard requirement by 2025, energy efficiency initiatives, and small-scale renewable energy production.
Supporters call the proposal the Clean Energy Jobs Act. After a series of public hearings on the proposal earlier this year, the plan was widely panned. In recent weeks Black and others have engaged in a series of meetings with fellow legislators and interests groups in the hopes of creating a more limited compromise that would have a better chance of becoming law.
We’ll have more on this breaking news as it develops.
UPDATE – The nonpartisan Legislative Council just published a comparison of the original bills to the new substitute amendment. You can read the memo, here.