State Dept. should've done more to prepare for worst-case scenario of Afghanistan withdrawal, Blinken says

“More could and should have been done” by the State Department to prepare for a worst-case scenario in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his staff Thursday, stating that the agency he leads wasn't fully primed for the swift fall of Kabul and the Afghan government.

The secretary spoke to a group of officials in a hastily organized event at Foggy Bottom following the release of the White House’s after-action report on the Afghanistan withdrawal. POLITICO gained access to the private online session, during which Blinken alternated between chief consoler of the department he leads and Cabinet member defending the administration and his own conduct.

Blinken said the department was in the process of delivering its own review to Congress in the hour-long meeting. But he didn’t commit to releasing the report publicly, stating that he preferred the department look forward instead of creating a “fixation” on the past.

The State Department declined to comment on the private workforce engagement.

During his opening remarks, Blinken highlighted five lessons the department gleaned during the review led by Ambassador Dan Smith, which spanned the time period from January 2020 to August 2021.

The first was that State should have more urgently planned and prepared for a worst-case scenario in Afghanistan. A lack of planning muscle at the department — especially for the most dire circumstances — has long been a complaint of some U.S. diplomats.

The department didn’t foresee the Afghan government’s rapid collapse as the Taliban swiftly took over the country. “This was seen as a very low probability, but obviously, potentially very high impact event and more could and should have been done to prepare for it,” Blinken said.

Another was that State’s own contingency plans were “inhibited” by a concern that such open preparation “might send the wrong signal to Afghans and to the government that we'd lost confidence in it and precipitate exactly what we hoped to prevent, which was its collapse.”

Other findings included a lack of clear authority of who led the evacuation operation, “competing and conflicting guidance” from Washington on evacuation priorities and a lack of clear tracking of Americans in Afghanistan.

“Even though there were things that we got right, things that we got wrong, things that we could do better, it's really important to me that no matter what, this country knows and appreciates the fact that you all served with incredible dedication and incredible distinction,” Blinken said.

The secretary then faced questions from the in-person and online audiences, some of whom interrogated the handling of the withdrawal and treatment of officials upon return from a brutal assignment.

One person asked whether Blinken would provide Congress with a copy of a July 2021 dissent cable that warned of Kabul’s collapse following an American military withdrawal. House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) subpoenaed the State Department for the document.

Blinken said he likely would not do so, adding that handing over the cable would have a “chilling effect” on speaking truth to power within the department. Engaging in dissent “is a vital principle that we need to uphold,” Blinken said to applause.

“This principle of protecting that channel overrides other considerations that are real and relevant in terms of making the cable available."

The dissent channel is a long-standing official avenue for State Department employees to voice alternative opinions on policy and other matters. The submissions are generally kept private to allow people to feel free in offering what can be unpopular views.

Toward the end of the session, a woman urged Blinken to release the after-action report so that State and U.S. government officials — as well as the American public — could have a chance to review its contents.

Not releasing the report leads to a sense of “disillusionment” within the department, especially those who were in Kabul during the withdrawal, she said, because it feels “like there’s more concern about blowback than interest in being transparent.”

Blinken said one reason he wanted to keep the report under wraps was so others couldn’t “see some of the vulnerabilities and deficiencies that we have, which is information that would not be good to share in a broad way, even as we work, of course, to correct those.”

Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

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Former Michigan House speaker charged with accepting bribes for cannabis licenses

Rick Johnson, a former Republican Michigan House speaker turned cannabis regulator, received more than $110,000 in bribes in exchange for supporting companies seeking medical marijuana licenses, alleges a federal charging document filed in federal district court Thursday.

Johnson was charged alongside three defendants: John Dalaly, a business owner charged with paying bribes; and Brian Pierce and Vincent Brown, lobbyists charged with conspiracy to commit bribery.

All four defendants signed plea deals admitting guilt to the charges.

“[The marijuana industry has] been held out as an equalizing opportunity,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten said at a press conference Thursday. “Yet what we’ve learned today is that one of its key leaders … acted corruptly and did so at a moment that mattered most for those who want to get ahead in this industry.”

The background: Johnson served as a state representative from 1999 to 2004, including three years as House speaker. After leaving office, he ran a lobbying firm in Lansing, before serving as the chair of the Michigan marijuana licensing board from 2017 to 2019, according to court documents.

Johnson was “at the heart of this corrupt scheme,” Totten said, outlining cash payments and other perks like private chartered flights through Dalaly’s companies.

The investigation, which started in 2017, was spearheaded by the FBI.

“Rooting out corruption is exceptionally difficult,” FBI special agent Jim Tarasca told reporters. Tarasca thanked forensic accountants and computer forensic examiners who helped determine the money trail and digital evidence to support the charges.

For years, the FBI has been warning states about the threat of public corruption posed by the cannabis industry. Local officials have been charged with similar crimes from California to Massachusetts, and corruption allegations targeting state officials in Arkansas and Missouri have been swirling for years.

More details: Dalaly operated a company that was seeking a medical marijuana license from the board. Pierce and Brown lobbied on behalf of another company that was seeking a license. Johnson not only voted in favor of those companies obtaining licenses, but also provided “valuable non-public information about the anticipated rules” surrounding the medical marijuana program, court documents allege.

Pierce and Brown attempted to hide payments to Johnson by funneling them through various companies that Johnson controlled, Totten explained. These payments came out of their client’s retainer fees, according to court documents.

David Griem, an attorney for Brown, said his client cooperated with the FBI “like a good citizen” before even hiring a lawyer and that he didn’t “know any of the big fish in this case.”

Attorneys for the other defendants did not immediately return requests for comment.

What’s next: All four defendants are expected to be arraigned and have plea hearings in the next one to two weeks, Totten said.

The investigation is ongoing, and Tarasca asked any members of the public who have information related to the charges to contact the FBI.

The four defendants pledged to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.

Johnson and Dalaly face a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

In his plea deal, Johnson agreed to forfeit the $110,000 in bribes and the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed not to oppose his request for a reduction in offense level, which would impact his sentencing.

Pierce and Brown face a maximum of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

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The Trump Cable News Coverage Was Good, Actually

A minor sidebar to the Donald Trump arraignment on Tuesday was a chorus of raspberries from members of the press complaining about the overload of coverage by cable news.

“The Trump Show is back,” the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer wrote, criticizing “the minute-by-minute broadcasting of his private plane arriving in New York” and “blanket coverage of his speech.” The Washington Post’s Paul Farhi rang the same bell. “On a day the news media constantly described as ‘historic,’ it didn’t actually look like much,” he wrote. My former boss Susan Glasser, now at the New Yorker, went to Twitter to heave her scorn on the spectacle: “Worn out already by breathless incremental coverage of Trump today: He’s walking! He might talk, oh he didn’t talk! He’s in a motorcade, it’s x cars long! Seriously???” New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo joined her: “ok, person sitting with me in the studio, tell us what’s happening in the courtroom now. OK, what about now? How about now? What is he thinking now? Where’s the judge sitting? OK, what’s happening now?” Former CNN Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter called the coverage “interminable.”

That the coverage was monotonous, tail-chasing, incremental, repetitive and droning cannot be denied. The ratio of reportable news to airtime might have broken the record at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Some segments made Andy Warhol’s film Empire — a single, unchanging, eight-hour view of the Empire State Building — look like a riveting drama in comparison as the reporters and commentators struggled to find something noteworthy or original to say.

But what the critics overlooked was that cable news coverage isn’t supposed to be viewed nonstop like a news version of Empire — the way most of them were watching — but sporadically. That’s especially true of dominant stories like the arraignment of a former president who happens to be a candidate for reelection. That the story was news, nobody will deny. Every newspaper in the country put the Trump arraignment on Page One above the fold and published supplementary pieces galore about the legal and political ramifications of the criminal charge, yet you don’t hear anybody talking about print overkill.

Cable news was designed from its beginning in 1980, when Ted Turner started CNN, to deliver saturation coverage of major breaking news events like elections, catastrophic weather, wars, riots, school shootings, major criminal trials, impeachments, and now, arraignments like Trump’s, as they happen. When a big story breaks, the cable networks expect — rightly — that casual viewers beyond the core audience will tune in solely to learn the latest. These viewers come in waves, wanting to partake, however distantly, in the story that’s dominating the news. They tune in until their curiosity is sated and then tune out as other viewers arrive.

Because the networks understand that their audience is cycling through, they do their best to find new ways to keep telling it and to have something to share, even if it’s a kind of rerun when new viewers join. This system isn’t perfect. Often, when there’s no new breaking news to report, the reporters and commentators “dribble,” that is, keeping the news ball moving but not taking any shots because there are no shots to take. But even dribbling can be defended if it serves incoming viewers.

Cable news producers never expected anybody to watch 12 hours straight, and practically nobody does, just like nobody read every story the New York Times published about the Trump arraignment. The last time the Pew Research Center analyzed the cable news audience, it found the average viewer tunes in for only 25 minutes a day. Even the heaviest cable news viewers last for an average of only 72 minutes on the medium.

Like most drug users, cable news viewers have learned to titrate their dose before suffering the insulin shock of boredom that overwhelmed so many members of the commentariat this week. However many viewers suffered through all the coverage, there can’t be many aside from the journalists who had to tune in for their jobs or their own perverse addiction, so keep your pity in reserve. The most popular shows on cable news rarely get more than 3.3 million viewers a night.

If you were crazy enough to watch the coverage into the night, at which point reporters had actually read the formal charges against Trump, you would have learned something the daylight hours didn’t report: That district attorney Alvin Bragg appears to have a weak case. So there’s that.

In a perfect world, nobody would ever waste time watching breaking news on TV, waiting anxiously for something important to happen. Every moment would top the last as new revelations poured in. But news has its limits, as the BBC admitted on the evening of April 18, 1930, after the news well went dry one day. The announcer didn’t dribble, he came clean. “There is no news,” he said, and cut away to piano music for 15 minutes until the next scheduled program started.

******

The news is often like a meringue. It needs to be whipped into something worth consuming. Send news recipes to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed likes pie. My Mastodon account has cut the cord. My Post account wants to be booked on Jake Tapper’s show. My RSS feed says, “Kill your TV.”

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‘Win-win’: Washington is just fine with the China-brokered Saudi-Iran deal

As Washington denizens look toward the Middle East and see China brokering diplomatic deals between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the surprising general response has been: One less thing for us to worry about.

Top diplomats for Saudi Arabia and Iran were in Beijing on Thursday to finalize a deal that would reopen embassies, resume direct flights between their two nations and restart security and trade agreements. It’s the latest sign that Beijing is not content with being solely a regional behemoth, but rather a major global power.

But the Biden administration, which has openly worried about China’s growing clout in the Middle East, has met this development with a shrug. And while some in Washington, D.C. fear that China is filling a vacuum left by the United States, most see only upside to Beijing’s regional foray.

“Not everything between the U.S. and China has to be a zero-sum game,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East panel. Plus, he said, better relations between Riyadh and Tehran means that there will be less conflict in the region, which would lower the chance of the United States getting dragged into a fighting in the Middle East. “I don't know why we would perceive there to be a downside to de-escalation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

Others provided reasons stretching from the grand strategic to the tactical.

At the highest level, a more-involved China means the United States can focus on its national security priorities, namely defending Ukraine against Russia and deterring China from invading Taiwan. Friendlier ties between Riyadh and Tehran also mean that the Saudi-led coalition’s eight-year war on Yemen could soon come to an end, a key goal for the Biden administration. And there’s the fact that the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Iran, meaning Washington couldn’t have brokered the rapprochement.

“The United States should see China's mediation of a Saudi-Iran agreement as a win-win for American interests,” said Martin Indyk, who served as the special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from 2013 to 2014. And if the deal falls apart, “the blame for the failure will be on China's back and its foray into Gulf diplomacy will be seen to be much ado about nothing.”

This is generally the argument Biden administration officials make in public and private, despite President Joe Biden’s push for competition with China in the military, economic and technological arenas.

A Democratic Senate aide, who like others was granted anonymity to detail sensitive discussions and diplomacy, said lawmakers express mixed feelings when briefed by senior figures on the deal.

“It’s good in that it reduces the threat of nuclear escalation and conflict in the region,” the staffer has heard lawmakers say, but others argue “it gives China too much influence and positions them in the Middle East, where they have never really been engaged, as a political power.” The good-or-bad arguments don’t fall neatly on party lines, the aide noted.

But there’s no real evidence that China’s role in the Saudi-Iran deal means the United States has somehow removed itself from the Middle East. Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, called Saudi Arabia’s chief of defense Thursday to discuss security cooperation and the military partnership. Col. Joe Buccino, a CENTCOM spokesperson, said the conversation wasn’t tied to diplomacy in China. “Frankly we didn't even think of that," he said.

It shows that Beijing is involved in one aspect of the Middle East’s politics, but hasn’t usurped America’s place in all facets. Among other things, the U.S. is working with Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, partnering in cyberspace and maritime security operations, investing in Riyadh’s infrastructure goals and developing advanced telecommunications networks. And Washington remains the kingdom’s most important security partner, sending billions in weapons to help defend against regional threats — mainly from Iran — and stationing 3,000 troops in the kingdom.

“It's not like Iran's Shia militias have quieted down on threats or propaganda,” said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Iranian proxies.

China’s maneuvering, of course, has raised eyebrows in Washington and around the world. It shows Beijing’s willingness to make nice with distant partners, like Iran, and a possible desire to play the long game so that the region eventually tips in China’s favor.

“The U.S. is perceived as leaving the Middle East, and China fills the void,” gaining more influence in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, a Middle East official said. “China becomes the winner here.”

After saying “the Saudi-Iran thing isn’t that big a deal,” a GOP congressional aide added that the “Chinese capitalized on U.S disengagement...We will see others play upon our absence even more in the months ahead.”

There’s also the fear that Riyadh, upset that Biden once vowed to make the kingdom a “pariah,” might leverage China’s clout to extract more support from the United States. It’s why Biden traveled to Jeddah last year to mend relations with Saudi Arabia and box China out of the region.

But in the immediate term, Washington is chalking up China’s work on the Saudi-Iran deal as a win for the United States, not a loss.

“Anything that reduces the chances of conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a good thing, regardless of who brokered it,” said Matthew Duss, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ former foreign policy adviser now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Joe Gould contributed to this report.

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IRS releases plan to spend $80 billion windfall — with critical details missing

The IRS released a much-anticipated report on Thursday outlining how it will spend new funding on ambitious hiring plans and increased enforcement aimed at wealthy taxpayers and big corporations — but left a long list of questions unanswered, which is bound to aggravate lawmakers.

The report describes the agency’s objectives for the $80 billion cash infusion that was provided by Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, including plans to create “world-class” customer service for taxpayers seeking assistance; develop data management systems so IRS employees can have a 360-degree view of a taxpayers’ information; and hire specialized lawyers and accountantswho can help audit the most complex corporate and partnership returns.

Democratic lawmakers and newly appointed IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel say the agency’s transformation will help bring in an estimated half-trillion dollars that the government misses out on every year due to tax evasion, all the while making it much easier for Americans to file their taxes every year. Republicans fiercely oppose the expansion, contending the agency will unleash an army of auditors against average Americans and small businesses.

But the vaguely worded report, which was delivered more than a month later than the deadline Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen set, answered few of the questions that lawmakers have been lobbing at Yellen and IRS officials for months about specific budget forecasts and department hiring.

The IRS, which counted around 78,700 employees in 2021, says in the report that it plans to bring on nearly 30,000 new employees by the end of fiscal year 2025. That would include 8,782 hires in enforcement and 13,883 in taxpayer services and surely offset some attrition in the agency's ranks from retirements.

The agency intends to spend $2.8 billion of the funding in 2023 and $5.4 billion in 2024 and, over a 10-year period, allot a hefty sum of $41.7 billion alone to scrutinizing the most sophisticated, high-income taxpayers.

However, the IRS did not provide essential information sought by lawmakers on the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees, such as how many employees the agency would like to hire long term for enforcement; how exactly the IRS will comply with a pledge by Yellen not to increase audits on those making less than $400,000; and what the agency forecasts to spend on operations, enforcement and customer service from fiscal years 2025 through 2031.

Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo defended the limited budget forecast in a call with reporters Thursday, saying technology advancements such as digital scanning of paper returns and automated phone services will improve agency productivity. That creates uncertainty around how many employees the IRS will ultimately need to hire, Adeyemo said.

“I hope that we can get better at forecasting, but I just think it’s good management and leadership practice” to refrain from projecting beyond fiscal year 2024, Werfel added.

Still, those omissions could be no coincidence with Republicans primed to pounce on any details of the IRS’ bulked-up enforcement. When Treasury first asked for new money for the IRS, the department specified exactly how many workers the IRS would hire to crack down on tax cheats: 86,852.

Republicans have been using that figure ever since as grist for attack ads on Democrats.

Democrats have fired back that the agency has been starved of resources to fairly enforce the tax code — with audit rates for millionaires and corporations falling by 77 percent and 44 percent, respectively, from 2010 to 2017 — and that much of the new hiring is needed to replace the two-thirds of the IRS workforce that will be eligible to retire in the next six years.

Here’s a look at what the report says about key elements of the IRS strategy:

ENFORCEMENT

The agency says it wants to leverage data analytics and technology to audit complex tax returns and plans on hiring the first waves of specialists focused on big companies, partnerships and high-income individuals in fiscal year 2023. The IRS will increase enforcement activities on cryptocurrencies and in areas where audits have declined significantly over the years, such as in estate, gift and employment taxation.

That will involve increasing staff in the Office of Chief Counsel, the legal adviser to the IRS based at the Treasury Department, to help litigate cases and issue clear guidance on tax laws. The agency insists ramped-up enforcement will apply to only those making more than $400,000.

“People who get W-2s or Social Security payments or have a small business should not be worried about some new wave of IRS audits. We’re taking that off the table,” Werfel said.

In a nod to lawmakers’ concerns about a Stanford study published earlier this year finding that Black taxpayers are three to five times more likely to be audited by the IRS, the agency also said it will create a team in fiscal year 2024 to look at whether enforcement activities disproportionately burden certain groups and address any disparities in tax administration according to gender, race and age.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

The IRS wants to create online business accounts where taxpayers can let the agency know what communication methods they prefer — whether digital, phone or in-person — and hire more representatives to operate the phone lines and staff Taxpayer Assistance Centers.

Under the modernized system, the IRS said taxpayers will be able to access their entire account history, including notices and returns; make payments; and get status updates for their filings, all online. They would also receive personalized alerts from the IRS to better understand their tax obligations and eligibility for credits and deductions.

The IRS launched a new tool this filing season that allowed taxpayers to respond to the nine most common notices online, and the agency plans to add 72 more notices online by the end of fiscal year 2024.

“For many, letters from the IRS in the mail could be a thing of the past. For the first time, the IRS will help taxpayers identify potential mistakes before filing,” Werfel said.

The agency says it wants to make it easier for employees to review tax returns by implementing full digital scanning of paper forms — which National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins has called the “kryptonite” that jammed up the IRS during the pandemic — in the next five years and make that data easily accessible to employees in a centralized case management system.

TECHNOLOGY

The IRS is looking to replace old programming language in its aging computer systems and consolidate information on the cloud while improving cybersecurity to protect taxpayer privacy. Machine learning could be used to extract data and do advanced analytics on complex tax returns, the agency says.

PERSONNEL

The agency insists its hiring successes will not only depend on the prospects of higher pay for specialized employees, but also a cultural shift that gets workers excited about the IRS’s mission. It will prioritize recruiting from diverse and underrepresented talent pools and streamline the hiring process, which frequently gets bogged down in bureaucratic hurdles and discourages candidates from joining the IRS.

The agency will consider allowing employees to work from more locations around the U.S. to attract top-tier talent and employ gig workers on an as-needed basis. The IRS adds that it wants its employees to become far more data-savvy.

Brian Faler contributed to this report.

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Defense Department detains hotel guest in training mix-up

BOSTON — Participants in a Department of Defense training exercise at a Boston hotel entered the wrong room Tuesday and mistakenly detained a hotel guest instead of the individual assigned the role of the person to be detained, according to the FBI.

The incident occurred about 10 p.m. with the Boston Division of the FBI assisting the U.S. Department of Defense in conducting the Defense Department exercise.

The exercise was meant to simulate a situation that personnel might encounter during an actual incident.

“Based on inaccurate information, they were mistakenly sent to the wrong room and detained an individual, not the intended role player,” an FBI said in a written statement. “Thankfully nobody was injured.”

A call to the Department of Defense was not immediately returned.

The Boston Police Department was called and responded to the scene to confirm that the incident was indeed a training exercise, officials said.

“Safety is always a priority of the FBI, and our law enforcement partners, and we take these incidents very seriously,” the FBI statement added. “The Boston Division is reviewing the incident with DOD for further action as deemed appropriate.”

A spokesman for Delta Air Lines said the airline was looking to see if anyone from the airline might have been mistakenly caught up in the incident.

“We are looking into reports of an alleged incident in Boston that may involve Delta people,” the spokesperson said in a written statement. “We have nothing further to share at this time other than to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring the safety and well-being of our people.”

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Hochul officials drop proposal to weaken climate law amid criticism

ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Kathy Hochul’s top climate officials, a day after defending a proposal to rewrite the climate law because of cost concerns, said Wednesday that the major change is no longer a priority in budget negotiations after backlash from environmental advocates and lawmakers.

In an interview with POLITICO, state Department of Environmental Commissioner Basil Seggos and NYSERDA president and CEO Doreen Harris indicated that Hochul would not be pushing a controversial plan to change how New York accounts for its emissions.

Last week, POLITICO was the first to report that the climate law revision was a priority in budget talks that are set to go into overtime at least until Monday. She is still seeking a deal on “cap and invest,” which would set up an auction for emissions allowances and drive increased gas and energy prices that would include a rebate to consumers to cushion the cost at the pump, they said.

They didn’t rule out the measure being considered in the future but noted it won’t be a top agenda item in the budget for the Democratic governor.

“The other other elements that we’ve discussed recently may take time to get done. We may get it done during the budget. That may happen during the session; it may take the course of a year,” Seggos said Wednesday. "The fundamental takeaway is it’s full steam ahead for cap and invest with the climate action rebate and any other elements we’ll take up as soon as we can.”

The shift comes after Seggos and Harris earlier this week went on a media blitz to defend Hochul’s proposal. They penned an op-ed on the cost concerns, went on Spectrum News’ Capital Tonight and even defended the plan to rewrite the climate law to POLITICO in an interview on Tuesday.

Some Democratic lawmakers have slammed the proposal, as have environmental groups who see it as a weakening of the state’s climate law.

“With respect to the budget, we’re focusing on the rebates in the first instance,” Harris said Wednesday. “Ultimately, there’s a lot of nuance around this accounting framework that we are committed to sorting out.”

Liz Moran, the New York policy advocate for Earthjustice, said it was good the governor has dropped the push.

“This is a conversation that really sidetracked us from being able to have a meaningful conversation for about a week,” Moran said. “What took place over the past week should not be repeated.”

She said now the focus could turn to proposals such as electrifying new buildings, a measure to limit gas utility expansion and cap utility bill expenses for low and moderate income New York residents and other priorities. Environmental groups will continue to oppose the accounting change.

New York’s law was the most ambitious statutory mandate in the nation requiring emissions reductions when it passed in 2019. It required emissions to be slashed 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050, with the remainder offset. It also requires zero-emissions electricity by 2040.

While other states have passed laws requiring more aggressive percentage reductions since, New York is unique in using three factors that increase the emissions that have to be reduced: a 20-year metric, out-of-state upstream emissions from imported fuels and “biogenic” emissions from burning fuels like wood and ethanol.

New York is the one of only two jurisdictions to use a 20-year time horizon to account for the damaging effects of planet-warming gasses instead of 100 years. Maryland’s 2022 climate law also uses the 20-year metric.

The important distinction was a key provision pushed by supporters of the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act passed in 2019. It makes methane, the main component of natural gas, more potent than under the longer accounting timeline. Backers say this more accurately reflects the short-term warming impact of greenhouse gasses and the urgency around reducing emissions.

The three components make New York’s law more ambitious in terms of the urgency of action and the amount of reductions required. If New York were to use the same accounting nearly every other state does, its statutory targets would fall behind at least Washington, Massachusetts and Maryland — the only other state to use the 20-year timeline for its emission reduction requirement.

Seggos and Harris said Tuesday that unique accounting approach also raises potential costs of New York’s climate mandates for residents.

Some business groups, biofuels producers and the New York State AFL-CIO have backed the accounting change.

“We think reviewing the emissions accounting standards makes sense in the context of cap and invest, building decarbonization, building public renewables, and other vital proposals to reduce emissions,” Mario Cilento, president of the New York State AFL-CIO said in a statement March 31.

New York’s 20-year standard “will make us far less competitive to attract private developers and other clean energy manufacturers. It will also make it difficult to prevent leakage associated with manufacturing and other employers leaving the state for other jurisdictions,” he said.

Environmental groups have also raised concerns that an accounting change could allow more import and burning of fuels like renewable natural gas, which still emit health-harming co-pollutants but could be counted as lower carbon if the state changes its policy.

New York implementing a cap-and-trade system to limit emissions would be a significant step. But there’s a gulf between Hochul’s proposal and legislative leaders. Assembly Democrats have indicated they’d rather deal with “cap and invest,” as the state has branded it, outside the budget. The Senate has proposed a version that would prohibit any trading of allowances and put more restrictions on the spending side.

Seggos said he wasn’t sure if the Senate’s restrictions on trading had implications for affordability and that he’d leave the details up to staff at the negotiating table.

“Cost remains a priority for us, and that the governor’s original proposal through her State of the State remains a priority for her, and the more difficult potential changes to the law that that have been contemplated may take more time,” he said.

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