Mark Tapscott has a good piece in today’s Examiner on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a group of several Northeast states that banded together to form their own private little cap and trade experiment. Tapscott writes:

In the case of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) that includes New Jersey New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware and Maryland, greed and secrecy appear to be the most dominant considerations.
RGGI describes itself on its web site as “the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Ten Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states have capped and will reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector 10% by 2018.”
Established by the participating states in 2008 with the assistance of environmentalists as a model for federal lawmakers, the RGGI has since sold more than $688 million in carbon dioxide permits, or credits, according to New Jersey Watchdog.
“The bidders at RGGI auctions include Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase and other Wall Street heavyweights,” according to a new report by NJ Watchdog.
“They hope to make big money by speculating on the price of permits, called allowances. Electric power plants are required to obtain an allowance for each ton of CO-2 they emit,” NJ Watchdog said.
But guess what NJ Watchdog was told when its reporters asked for the names of buyers of the $688 million in permits and what impact will their purchases have on utility bills paid by millions of residents in the 10 states participating in RGGI?
“That’s none of our business, according to the bureaucrats in charge. They denied New Jersey Watchdog’s Open Public Records Act requests for auction details, contending the bidders’ ‘expectation of privacy’ and ‘trade secrets’ outweigh the public right to know,” according to NJ Watchdog.

Captain transparency strikes again. Do read the entire piece here.