Californians already pay $1.40 in taxes and fees per gallon of gas. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) wanted to add another 65 cents to this total in 2025, creating an economic catastrophe.   

I was the first member of the Legislature to speak out against this on radio, TV and news sites. I created a petition with other legislators to send CARB the message that enough is enough and 13,000 of you responded.

CARB and Gov. Newsom did not listen following a public hearing and forged ahead with this price grab. Thankfully, the California Office of Administrative Law paused this. The agency said the public has not been warned about the impact of this increase, which is against the law.  This is what I was asking for from the beginning. No study had been created to determine the amount of suffering we would all endure.

This potential increase was done in secret, buried in a lengthy report about the state’s quest to improve the power grid for electric vehicles. This is unacceptable, people are already suffering enough as we have the highest prices in the nation.