On Wednesday, we published a commentary from Del. David Reid, D-Loudoun County, who was critical of the group Clean Virginia. We invited Clean Virginia to respond; this is the group’s response:
Virginians are facing surging electricity costs, increasing environmental risks and a pending utility takeover that could create the largest regulated electric utility in the country and lock in higher bills for a generation. The stakes beg the question: How is it not a disqualifying conflict of interest for a legislator to take money from a utility?
Families across Virginia are hurting. In Southwest Virginia, electric customers have faced some of the highest bills in the country, with rates rising three times faster than inflation over the past two decades. Dominion Energy customers have seen bills jump 20% in the last year alone. These aren’t just statistics. They represent families forced to choose between keeping the heat on and paying for groceries, retirees on fixed incomes watching utility bills consume more of their budgets, and small businesses fighting to stay open while facing unpredictable operating expenses. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.)
The pain Virginians feel each month is directly tied to the money that electric companies dump into Virginia’s politics. Rising bills are not inevitable — they are the result of policy choices made by the General Assembly. Dominion Energy alone has poured over $46 million into campaigns and political action committees over the last decade. During that same period, Dominion overcharged its customers by at least $1.6 billion. Instead of returning those overcharges, Dominion repeatedly pushed legislation designed to transfer the money directly to shareholders and executives.
Corporations like Dominion can flood our political system with campaign cash because Virginia is one of only four states in the entire country that still allows unlimited campaign contributions. Until 2005, federal law helped guard against this egregious conflict of interest through the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA). After Congress repealed it, utility political spending surged, and so did customer bills. Experts found that states without corporate contribution limits or bans on utility spending saw utilities spend an average increase of $58,000 more on politics each year than states with stronger safeguards. Those same states approved higher returns on equity for utilities, leading to around $4 million more in annual profits at customers’ expense.
The record is clear. Utilities do not write campaign checks out of generosity or civic duty. Their investments in political influence have to by law be in the interests of their shareholders. And that investment pays off when lawmakers block reforms that would lower bills, especially when that money comes from the utility’s excessive profits.
Now NextEra, a utility monopoly with an even more troubling record of political corruption, is willing to pay $67 billion to acquire Dominion Energy, setting up the most significant utility regulatory proceeding in a generation. NextEra is hungry to profit from Virginia’s data-center boom and saddle Virginians with high electric bills. Both NextEra and Dominion are exploiting Virginia’s non-existent campaign finance laws, pouring money into the political system at the very moment their financial interests are on the line.
These utilities need a friendly legislature that welcomes corporate cash, defends the status quo, and puts the utilities’ bottom line ahead of lower costs for Virginia families. Both NextEra and Dominion have every incentive — and the financial means — to make sure they get one.
This playbook has served NextEra well in Florida. Legislators funded by NextEra’s largest subsidiary, Florida Power & Light (FPL), removed four out of five Public Service Commissioners for denying a rate increase in 2010. The Commission learned its lesson, and has not denied a single increase since, in fact they approved the largest rate hike in FPL’s history. And in 2020, FPL engineered a utility-friendly super-majority through a “ghost candidate” operation to steal three state Senate seats in 2020. Today, NextEra takes a greater percentage of customer’s bills for its corporate profit than any other utility in the country except one.
Thankfully in Virginia, over 60 legislators — Democrats and Republicans alike — have rejected that utility influence, proving they can vote their conscience on utility legislation and still thrive politically. They refused the transactional relationship. They chose their constituents over corporate donors. Clean Virginia has always, and will continue, to promote the financial interests of those constituents, Virginia’s utility customers, against a utility influence machine stacked against them.
Individual integrity and political courage matter, but they are no substitute for systemic reform. That’s why Clean Virginia has consistently advocated for comprehensive campaign finance reform — including a ban on corporate contributions as well as contribution limits on all other donors, Clean Virginia included.
We call on every member of the General Assembly, whether they accept utility money or not, to pass comprehensive campaign finance reform. 80% of Virginians support limiting the influence of big money in politics. Restoring public trust in our democracy begins with ending a system that allows unlimited corporate money to shape public policy.
Ultimately, voters will decide who they trust: representatives who fight for their constituents and to change a broken political system, or representatives who cash checks from the very utilities driving up our bills.
Brennan Gilmore serves as the executive director of Clean Virginia. He can be reached at brennan@cleanvirginia.org.
