GOP Lawmaker a Hero in Passage of $5B Green Building and Jobs Bill

In a little-noticed vote late last Friday, the New York Senate passed a groundbreaking measure that will leverage $112 million of proceeds from carbon auctions to kick-start a state-wide $5 billion energy efficiency effort that will pay for itself.

Called the Green Job/Green New York Act, the measure will finance upfront costs for one million homeowners to weatherize their houses, and let them repay the loans from the energy savings realized over time. The act, which makes funding available for job training, is also expected to create up to 16,000 new jobs.

What makes the green victory especially unusual and significant is that it was made possible by state Sen. Thomas Morahan (photo at right), a Republican who bucked his party to support the bill, opening the gates for a flood of bipartisan votes for passage.

"We needed a Republican vote to get it passed, and Morahan was the first to announce his support," said Dan Cantor, the executive director of the Working Families Party, which spearheaded the legislative effort. "He showed that he was going to make his decision on the merits of the bill, not party politics."

While the bill is a triple victory that simultaneously combats climate change, lowers energy costs for homeowners, and creates thousands of new jobs, it also provides a model for other states to emulate, and has larger national implications.

The policy design provides an alternative mechanism for providing consumer benefit from carbon revenues that federal lawmakers, wrestling with climate legislation, must now consider.

In addition, the almost unanimous support the bill received from New York's Republican lawmakers undermines the wisdom and validity of a ferocious national campaign being mounted by their right-wing brethren to halt the progress of green jobs legislation everywhere.

Free Market Formula

Observers say the new law will create the largest state-based program of its kind, with government forming a partnership with the private sector to jump-start economic activity that will be self-sustaining.

It is that free-market formula which in the end attracted Republican lawmakers to make common cause with the left-wing Working Families Party, which spearheaded the legislative effort, supported by a broad coalition of labor, community and environmental groups.

"And it wasn't just a traditional labor, community and environmental coalition, but the business community was solidly behind this, too," Cantor said. "We had the building contractors at the table supporting it, and the Wall Street guys saying they were willing to invest in this."

The plan envisions retrofitting one million New York homes over the next five years in urban, rural and suburban neighborhoods across the state. The price tag for the project is estimated at $5 billion, most of which will be borrowed by property owners from private lenders. The state will use public money in part to fund a "loan loss reserve." The reserve would underwrite losses, providing security to lenders that participate and assuring a reasonable interest rate for property owners.

The plan is a welcome innovation in the aftermath of the mortgage meltdown and the credit crisis that has followed. It brings the promise of new jobs and economic activity to many areas of the state that were already suffering from joblessness and stagnation even before the financial collapse.