After campaigning to “watch the weight” of state government, one of Gov. Bill Haslam’s first efforts was in 2012, when he moved to merge six boards with significant environmental duties into three, affecting one with regulatory power over gas stations – including the Haslam family’s Pilot Travel Centers.
The Republican insisted his proposal wouldn’t diminish conservation efforts in Tennessee or present a conflict of interest for him.
Given the ensuing events of the next four years, however, it’s difficult to see how that’s been the case.
Haslam combined the Solid Waste Disposal and the Petroleum Underground Storage Tank boards; the Water Quality Control and Oil and Gas boards; and the Conservation Commission and Tennessee Heritage Conservation Trust Fund board.
The money for regulating and replacing leaky underground tanks – some built and buried many decades ago – has come from a fund supported by taxpayers by way of a gas tax and by a per-tank fee from the oil industry and gas station companies.
In 2010, the revenue ratio was 77.8 percent taxpayers and 22.2 percent industry. But by 2015, that funding ratio was shifting. Most recently, the burden had moved more to us: about 90 percent taxpayers and 10 percent industry.
Now, the industry – the same industry that helped make Gov. Haslam one of the richest elected officials in America – seems to be on track for paying even less for leaky tanks and gas spills, a major cause of contamination in drinking water.
For the record, Haslam denies any seeming conflict.
But for us, at least, the timeline raises lots of eyebrows.
When first elected, Haslam – a former president of the Knoxville-based Pilot chain of truck stops, the son of Pilot’s founder and brother of its CEO – had pledged to recuse himself from matters that could affect the family business, in which he still holds an undisclosed stake.
But in 2012 when he merged the boards, the governor defended himself against questions of a conflict by saying that he cleared the legislation on combining the boards that could affect Pilot before the measure was introduced.
“I actually talked with legal counsel and others to say that obviously that’s a place that does intersect with Pilot, but really that wasn’t changing the authority; it was just combining two boards,” Haslam was quoted by The Associated Press at the time.
Yet, the year before in 2011, according to The Tennessean, Haslam imposed a temporary freeze on new rules and regulations, including a proposed requirement for gas stations to replace older, single-walled underground fuel storage tanks with double-walled tanks if they are used to dispense fuel blends with more than 10 percent ethanol.
That time, Haslam told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he had been unaware the freeze on rules and regulations would affect underground tanks and potentially Pilot.
Now, fast-forward to 2016.
Haslam’s new combined gas station regulatory board – now known as the Underground Storage Tank and Solid Waste Disposal Control Board – has legislative authority to eliminate the industry fees altogether, and could likely make that decision this fall. If the board takes that action, the cleanup costs will fall entirely on us.
A new law gives the board the power to give the gas stations and oil businesses of Tennessee another big break – suspending their annual fees to the $50 million environmental fund (the one now 90 percent stocked by our $0.04 per gallon gas tax payments) overseen by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
This is the fund that has been paying for leaky tank spills and cleanups since 1990. This is the fund – under the old rules under the old board – that helped bring about a cleanup culture that prompted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to rank Tennessee second in the country in terms of completed cleanups of leaky underground storage tanks.
In addition to regulating how that fund is replenished, the board set standards for the underground tanks at every gas station, and developed regulations that govern how tank owners test for leaks, conduct fuel delivery and respond to spills.
The board now has 14 members, and 12 of them are appointed by – you guessed it: the governor.
According to The Tennessean, since the board has been reconfigured, members representing consumers have been eliminated, but its four petroleum industry members have been retained. The board recently voted in favor of a resolution to increase the state dollars available to private companies for environmental spills caused by failures or accidents from $1 million to $2 million.
Last week, Haslam said his administration opposed the legislation passed this year to allow that board to eliminate fees paid for underground storage tanks like those at his family owned Pilot Flying J chain of truck stops. He said his administration sent a “flag” letter of opposition to the bill’s sponsors in March. The bill passed the House and Senate unanimously.
And the governor signed the bill.
Now it’s up the board – the board that the governor appointed.