Campaign Seeks Tax to Fund New Fuels
SACRAMENTO — Voters may get the opportunity this year to slap a new tax on oil pumped from California wells and use the money to pay for a variety of alternative energy programs aimed at cutting the state's petroleum use by 25% in a decade.
Hollywood producer and political activist Steven Bing and Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla are bankrolling a campaign for a ballot initiative that, if approved, could raise as much as $380 million a year to develop alternative fuels.
The initiative, which would amend the state constitution, could face little difficulty getting a place on the November ballot because of public outrage over sky-high gasoline prices and record profits at oil companies. In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, President Bush endorsed alternative fuels as a way to decrease U.S. dependence on imported oil.
If it qualifies for the ballot, the initiative could set off another big-spending media slugfest with millions of dollars going to TV advertising, some of it likely to feature Hollywood stars.
A coalition of oil companies and anti-tax activists is already organizing a counter-campaign, arguing that the alternative energy initiative is "nothing more than a hidden tax which could cost consumers and businesses hundreds of millions of dollars every year in higher gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices."
Bing declined to comment and Khosla was unavailable, but a spokeswoman for their campaign said the two men and their allies, who include university scientists, environmentalists and economists, expected to spend in excess of $10 million to "mount an aggressive, competitive campaign."
Bing is well known in Hollywood both as an investor in such films as "The Polar Express" and as a companion of beautiful women, including actress Elizabeth Hurley.
Bing, who has been shopping his initiative proposal to Hollywood insiders for at least the last month, appears to be trying to mine the same type of deep-pocketed, liberal-conservative support behind a successful 2004 ballot measure that created California's pioneering stem cell research organization. Between them, Bing and Khosla contributed more than $1 million to that campaign.
