Inslee makes amends for tribal veto

New law restores most consultation requirements for cap-and-trade spending

Less than a year ago, one of Gov. Jay Inslee’s most controversial vetoes left Native American tribal leaders fuming. On Thursday, some of those leaders were all smiles as he essentially restored most, if not quite all, of what he vetoed.

For the long version of the backstory, we broke down that veto last year in this piece. Here’s the short version:

While triumphantly signing the Climate Commitment Act, the state’s cap-and-trade system for major emitters of carbon, he also vetoed a section on tribal consultation out of concern that it would give tribes too much power to block clean energy projects paid for by the cap-and-trade system. Those projects are all in the future, but we’re talking about things like this pump-storage project planned for an area of cultural significance to the Yakama Indian Nation that isn’t part of the tribe’s reservation.

The tribes cried foul, arguing that their support had been essential for the bill’s passage, and conditioned on the consultation provisions. Washington’s landscape is literally littered with stuff that got built over tribal objection and damaged or threatened tribal resources, from dams and road culverts that block fish passage on dozens of major rivers systems to that giant liquified natural gas terminal going up at the Port of Tacoma. So you can understand why they’d want some more say over stuff that gets built in the future.

Chagrined at alienating such sympathetic and powerful allies, Inslee’s people swiftly spun up a process to replace the vetoed powers with something palatable to both sides.