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How are CT environmentalists preparing for another Trump presidency?

Connecticut DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes
Molly Ingram
/
WSHU
Connecticut DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes

The presidential inauguration is just two months away. With a new administration, new environmental policy will be ushered in, too. How are Connecticut officials preparing for it?

WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Jan Ellen Spiegel to discuss her article, “CT took on Trump on environment before; it will probably be harder to do it again,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read her story here.

WSHU: Hello, Jan. Connecticut has taken on Trump on the environment before, but Gov. Ned Lamont (D) and state officials feel it might be harder this time around. Why?

JES: Well, there are several factors. One of them is really very much a legal factor, which is a little bit archaic. Still, it has to do with some Supreme Court rulings that actually came during the Biden administration, by way of the very conservative court that Donald Trump had helped usher in. What those rulings essentially do is narrow the paths that attorneys general, like Attorney General William Tong, would have to fight against various rules and regulations that the state doesn't want or to prevent rollbacks of existing regulations. The easy version of this is that when making rules and regulations, say in the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, couldn't just simply say, well, since this isn't in law, we have the right to make a regulation for it, which has been the case now for years and years and years.

WSHU: So we're talking here about the Chevron decision.

JES: Yes, the Chevron decision, which essentially said an agency can't make these rules and regulations without some specific direction from Congress unless, of course, it was already enacted.

WSHU: Basically, what we had before then was Congress would give the framework, and the agency would now fill in the details on how to get that done. However, now, with the Chevron decision, the Supreme Court says that Congress has to specify specific directions on how the agency should do its job.

JES: Yes, it used to be a whole lot looser. It was called the Chevron deference. Congress deferred to the agencies because presumably those agencies had all the expertise and lots of staff to figure this out, and Congress did not.

WSHU: Okay. So now we have the Trump administration coming in, and they have this Supreme Court ruling that will enable them to roll back a lot of what the EPA has been doing in recent years. Correct?

JES: Yes. One of the other big changes is that when the first administration came in, they were not always on top of what they should have been doing. They made a lot of mistakes. They got a lot of stuff thrown out of court. Presumably, they have learned from their previous experience how not to, for lack of a better way of putting it, screw things up. So they're going to be a little bit more deliberative and a little bit more adept at doing what they tried to do last time.

WSHU: This Trump administration has already picked the people who are going to run the EPA and environmental regulation. They have picked Long Island Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin (R-NY) to run the EPA and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum (R-ND) to run the Department of Interior. Could you just tell us a little bit about Lee Zeldin and what impact he might have?

JES: Well, his background is not environmental, which is the key thing to know. As a Long Island congressman, he certainly has supported any number of measures related to Long Island Sound that was his district. But in terms of big-picture environmental stuff, he does not have that background at all. Doug Burgum has been very much a fossil fuel proponent up there in North Dakota. But, you know, I think the big question out there is whether these people are being put into really running things or deconstructing things. And the sense you get, at least from published reports and other reporting, is that their expertise is not front and center the way it would be in any other administration. It's communication and doing what Donald Trump and other top members of his administration want done, which, in many cases of these departments, is essentially to undo what has been done in the past.

WSHU: Now, subsidies for clean energy were a big part of the Biden administration's push. They had specific legislation that contained a lot of money for energy efficiency, renewable energy and that kind of stuff. What's the feeling of Connecticut officials? Because we've taken advantage of a lot of these programs. What's their feeling about the Trump administration coming in and the ability to continue those clean energy programs, including wind energy, that we are pretty invested in?

JES: Well, wind energy, particularly offshore wind, has mostly benefited from tax credits. Big, big, big tax credits. There are two issues with offshore wind. First of all, Donald Trump has stated many, many times, he said in the first administration that he hates offshore wind. It has to do with an offshore wind installation off his golf course in Scotland that he hated looking at, and he has vowed to shut down offshore wind development from day one. Whether he could actually do that, especially with stuff that's already underway, remains to be seen.

But the other component, and he did try to, he actually did this in his first administration, which was to wind down those tax credits. Those tax credits were already getting lowered in his first administration, when Biden came in, he reinstated them and he reinstated them retroactively. That doesn't only apply to offshore wind, those big projects. It would apply to the tax credit you get if you put solar panels on your roof, which is just for regular people. It would apply to some of the tax credits you may be able to get for electric vehicles or subsidies for electric vehicles. This would affect every single state in the country, not just Connecticut. There are a few things that we think are coming down the pike that would have a greater impact on Connecticut, but the potential for rolling back the tax credits and the incentives and clawing back money from programs that President Biden put in place that stipulated in the project 2025 blueprint.

WSHU: President-elect Trump has disavowed this. He says he doesn't know anything about Project 2025.

JES: Yes, and he's already hired a few people who authored it and, apparently, according to news reports, is considering some others. So, if I were you, I wouldn't go discounting Project 2025.

WSHU: Now, the State Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, commissioner Katie Dykes, what is her take on this? How will she be able to protect the policies that Connecticut has put in place?

JES: I don't know, because she's really not saying. She is definitely not looking down the road and extrapolating what could happen, but these are some of the parameters she could face. For starters, about 25% of DEEP get some level of federal funding, if not for programs, literally for employees. That's how employees are paid. Could that money get pulled back, could it just not be re-upped in another year? We don't know, but that's certainly a consideration. Then there are the many, many incentive programs, money for projects, and the energy efficiency stuff that's a program that, in Project 2025, they recommend getting rid of entirely gone out. What would that do? It could have a potentially catastrophic effect if it happens.

What Commissioner Dykes has said is they are getting a lot of federal money right now. And you know, we certainly know that the Biden administration is pushing every red cent out the door before it has to leave office. So Commissioner Dykes is saying, Oh, well, we've got our hands full trying to get all this money appropriated and put in play and the action taken, but in terms of looking to the future, she is holding comments for now.

WSHU: Okay, and it will have an effect on the state budget, would it not? Because we're getting so much of this money from the federal government, and if that stops, it might affect state spending.

JES: Oh, it could definitely affect state spending. Beyond just the environmental components, I mean, I haven't even looked at what some of the other departments get, but DEEP does get a large amount of money from the federal government. The other thing it can do, very specifically for Connecticut, and we saw this play out in the first Trump administration, is basically slow down any kind of dealing with our ongoing air quality program and the emissions from upland power plants that we have, you know, fought in court, you know, not even for years, for decades, that stuff is stuck in court right now, and with the Trump administration coming back in, the odds of it moving quickly or getting changed are probably slim to none.

WSHU: So that takes us to the attorney general, who seems to be the point person as far as the state defense of its environmental policy is concerned. What is Attorney General William Tong saying?

JES: He is saying it's going to be a lot tougher, and it's going to be more challenging for the reasons we just said, which is the Chevron ruling and another ruling that involves major doctrines, where, again, you'd have to go back to Congress to authorize certain things. And he also feels that the incoming administration will be a little smarter than they were. The first time he has been meeting and discussing this, according to what he told me with many other blue-state attorneys general, they were just meeting fairly recently and figuring out how to move forward on many different fronts.

Here's the rub, though: first of all, there are many fronts, not the least of which is immigration, and never mind the environment. But the other thing is, you can't really go out and file a lawsuit until the administration actually does something you want to fight. You can't have a whole bunch of lawsuits ready to go on day one. You have to wait to see what they do. So they're planning. He says they're ready. You know, he's also said, do not understate. You can't understate what challenge it will be having to deal with a lot of this stuff, and the Chevron ruling in particular.

WSHU: Okay, so, for environmentalists, it's time to brace and try and hold on to what they've been able to get so far. But in the long run, our environmental policy is going to be affected by this.

JES: In all likelihood, it would be, and what I've heard from a lot of different people is that the states are going to have to pick up the slack. Well, the big question will be, how will they get the money to pick up the slack?

As WSHU Public Radio’s award-winning senior political reporter, Ebong Udoma draws on his extensive tenure to delve deep into state politics during a major election year.
Molly is a reporter covering Connecticut. She also produces Long Story Short, a podcast exploring public policy issues across Connecticut.