It’s finally dawned on Rep. Tina Kotek, D-Portland and speaker of the Oregon House, that pushing through a major new tax bill — House Bill 4001 — during a short legislative session isn’t as easy as she’d hoped. The bill is a “cap-and-invest” measure that limits carbon output but allows businesses to buy waivers to those limits.

Her response? Amend the bill to pass the “cap” part of the measure this year, then approve the remainder in the longer 2019 session. If that fails, she’d leave it up to the Environmental Quality Commission to develop the program. The commission’s members are appointed by the governor.

Oregonians deserve better. They deserve a Legislature that will deliberate and take responsibility for a program that will have impacts on businesses and Oregonian who will pay more for everything from gasoline to electricity because of it. If lawmakers insist on cap and invest, they must do it right. That means killing Kotek’s proposed changes to the bill and tackling the issue in a more deliberative way in 2019.