On Monday, California lawmakers approved the nation's first penalty for gas price gouging. It was an unusually fast process for a controversial issue, especially one opposed by the powerful oil industry, which has spent millions of dollars to stop it.
California lawmakers on Monday approved the nation's first penalty for gas price gouging, voting to give regulators the power to punish oil companies for profiting from the type ofThe Democrats in charge of the state Legislature worked quickly to pass the bill on Monday, just one week after it was introduced. It was an unusually fast process for a controversial issue, especially one opposed by the powerful oil industry, which has spent millions of dollars to stop it.
The companies would report this information, most of it to be kept confidential, to a new state agency empowered to monitor and investigate the petroleum market and subpoena oil company executives. The commission will rely on the work of this agency, plus a panel of experts, to decide whether to impose a penalty on oil company profits and how much that penalty should be.
But state regulators say those taxes and fees aren't enough to explain last summer, when the average cost of a gallon of gasoline in California was more than $2.60 higher than the national average.
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