By Brennan Gilmore
Gilmore is Executive Director of Clean Virginia.
The Oct. 11 editorial “Five modern myths” uses a recent study to praise Dominion Energy’s transparency before drawing a false equivalency between the political activities of regulated utility monopolies and environmental groups. Both assertions warrant closer examination:
First, the transparency study is an important data point. Dominion has taken strides on transparency that deserve recognition, but as a public service utility given a monopoly by the state, complete transparency should be the expected norm — not an exception to be rewarded. More concerning is that Virginia’s campaign finance system — one of the worst in the county — is so weak that Dominion does not need to go to great lengths to hide the way they have rigged our system. For just one example of what Dominion has done with full transparency, last year the company increased political spending tenfold to promote legislation that weakened regulation and allowed them to keep hundreds of millions of dollars in overcharges. This legislation was written by Dominion lobbyists and sponsored by legislators who have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Such a process is neither equitable nor in the interest of Virginians.
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Second, the false equivalency drawn in the editorial between Dominion’s spending and that of environmental groups misses the mark: Dominion’s activities are regulated by the politicians they are paying — they have a direct financial stake in the legislative actions of our representatives. Environmental groups are all non-profit organizations without that same financial stake. Worse, many Virginian politicians hold stock in Dominion, so both politicians and Dominion profit when Dominion wins. This is legalized corruption.
When a monopoly utility is allowed to have this much financial influence in our political process, consumers — particularly poorer communities — lose the most. Dominion customers currently pay the 8th-highest bills in the country and consumer protection groups do not come close to matching Dominion’s financial influence in our legislature.
Clean Virginia would like our Commonwealth to join the 25 other states in the country where this type of activity by monopoly public service utilities is banned. If Dominion’s political giving truly does not affect political behavior, then they should have no problem supporting a law banning this money altogether. Let them compete on the strength of their ideas, not the size of their campaign checks.
Finally, the author describes Dominion as a “bête noir” of the left, but fails to acknowledge that many of the fiercest critics of Dominion’s legalized corruption and anti-free market business model are on the right of the political spectrum. In a bitterly-divided political climate, opposition to Dominion’s legalized corruption is one thing that has united Virginians of all partisan leanings.