Barely a week into the 2019 legislative session, Republicans are complaining that they’ve been shut out of drafting one of the session’s highest-profile bills, the carbon cap and trade legislation that backers have dubbed the Clean Energy Jobs Bill.

House Republicans sent out a news release Monday lambasting their Democratic counterparts, who they said, “are poised to ram it through the process without careful consideration of its impact on Oregon’s families, who will bear the brunt of the bill, or employees whose jobs may be endangered.”

“The Republican Vice Chairs and Democrat Chairs of the Joint Committee on Carbon Reduction spent months and countless hours discussing conceptual ideas surrounding legislation during the interim prior to Christmas,” said Rep. David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford and co-vice chair of the committee. “However, I have not been privy to any legislative language since.”

The other Republican co-vice chair, Sen. Cliff Bentz of Ontario, noted that though the last committee meeting was held Dec. 21, the Democratic co-vice chair, Sen. Michael Dembrow of Portland, has been holding ongoing discussions with the governor’s office, the House speaker’s office and legislative counsel to draft the bill.

“Important decisions regarding ‘first draft’ content were therefore made without any input from the Republican co-chairs,” Bentz said in an email. “It should be made very clear that there has been no effort between December 21st and January 25 to involve Republicans in the development of a draft of this complicated, expensive carbon pricing bill.”

Dembrow’s response: He hasn’t seen the bill himself, which will likely get a first reading later this week.

“We’re all waiting for the final bill language, which we’re promised will be available by 3 pm on (Jan. 31),” he said. While he had hoped to have the draft available mid-month, he said that the legislative counsel drafting the bill went on vacation for two weeks, which delayed the process.

There are substantive issues remaining to be resolved in the legislation, which could make the difference between a meaningful climate change program or one that environmental groups believe would lack integrity. There is still debate, for instance, over which sectors of the economy should be exempted, which regulated entities will receive free allowances and how many. It’s unclear how strict the interim emissions reductions targets will be and how governance of the program will work. Some legislators worry about the impact of the legislation on gas prices, and after several years of debate, there are still concerns about where revenues from transportation fuel providers can legally be used.

Brock Smith, Bentz and fellow Republicans are no fans of the legislation, which they predict will be an expensive new tax on businesses and consumers that scares away jobs while doing little to combat global warming. Bentz said there are clear differences of opinion on many of the issues discussed last year, and those differences have not been resolved.

A coalition of business groups calling themselves the Partnership for Oregon Communities also opposes the legislation and launched their own broadside this week, complaining in a news release that Democrats were drafting the bill “behind closed doors.”

“Despite lawmakers’ claims of an inclusive process, it’s been almost an entire year since Oregonians had a chance to testify for or against cap and trade,” said Preston Mann, a spokesman for the group, referring to the last public comment period on the legislation during short 2018 legislative session. “That’s not right.”

Dembrow said he and Rep. Karin Power, D-Milwaukie, the Democratic co-vice chairs of the interim committee, spent many hours this fall working with Republicans on a draft of the bill.

“To say they were shut out of the work on this bill is incorrect. To say that this bill is rushed is equally incorrect,” he said. “After the bill comes out this week, we’ll have weeks of public testimony and consideration of further amendments. While not everyone will agree with where we land at the end of the day, we will have engaged in the kind of thorough public process that a program of this degree of consequence deserves.”