MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota state Rep. Dean Urdahl has a message for the federal government: Keep your laws off my light bulbs.
The retired teacher from Grove City — along with state Rep. Tom Emmer, a Republican candidate for governor — has drawn a new weapon in the battle to beat back the hand of the federal government: incandescent light bulbs, the kind that have been around for a century.
A handful of GOP lawmakers have launched a legislative crusade to let Minnesotans keep buying conventional light bulbs after the federal government orders lights-out on selling old bulbs in 2014. The backers have re-ignited a long-simmering debate about the environmental merits of energy-efficient bulbs while at the same time putting Minnesota, along with a growing list of other states, headlong into a states’ rights showdown with Washington.
“I want Minnesota to take a stand; we have the right to do this,” said Urdahl, a fourth-term Republican. “If a lawsuit is the result, so be it.”
Urdahl is pushing legislation that would allow Minnesota companies to produce and sell conventional bulbs in the state after the federal government prohibits their sale. He’s got no big beef with the new energy-saving variety; he’s got three in his kitchen.
“The real problem I have with this ban is it’s another instance of government creeping even further into our lives,” he said. “Our Founding Fathers would be dismayed if they knew Washington is reaching so far into our lives as to control the light bulbs we use.”
Urdahl has an unlikely foe in this lighting battle: Republican George W. Bush.
In 2007, then-President Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which imposes new efficiency standards beginning in 2012. The legislation will prohibit the sale of widely used incandescent bulbs, ranging from 40 watts to 100 watts. By 2014, the plan is to move consumers toward compact-fluorescent light bulbs, which are more energy efficient and last longer.
Urdahl said he thinks the federal legislation violates states’ rights allowed in the 10th Amendment. The U.S. Constitution allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce. Under his reading of the law, Urdahl said, light bulbs made in Minnesota solely for Minnesotans would be exempt from federal commerce laws because they aren’t shipped over state lines.
If this idea tanks, some activists are reportedly readying another legislative weapon in their states’ rights fight: low-flow toilets.
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