ST. PAUL – Yesterday the Minnesota Department of Transportation released recommendations from the Clean Transportation Standard Working Group. The working group is studying how meeting aggressive carbon targets impacts both consumers and various industries.

“States that have implemented changes to meet these aggressive standards report the costs will be passed on with high gas prices at the pump – up to 50 cents for diesel in California by 2030,” Senator John Jasinski (Faribault) Lead Republican on the Transportation Committee said. “For a regular driver 50 cents a gallon is incredible, for a small business owner or ag producer the cost increase would significantly damage their operations. I’m going to look at the recommendations, but after a session with $10 billion in new taxes – including automatic inflationary increases to gas – we need to be very careful on moving forward without a plan to give consumers some other form of tax relief.”