The defeat last week of a landmark climate bill, the Extreme Weather Taxpayer Relief Act (SB 420), was engineered by fossil fuel lobbyists who also lobby on behalf of local governments who would have benefited from a new climate fund created by the Act, according to F Minus, a lobbying accountability group. Lobbyists for Shell Oil, the Virginia Oil & Gas Association, Columbia Gas, and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce testified against SB 420 at a Feb. 3 hearing of the Senate Agriculture Conservation and Natural Resources Committee, which then voted 8-6 to kill the bill.
Shell Energy North America shares the firm Spotts Fain with the City of Portsmouth, which faces an estimated $176 million in costs for mitigating rising seas by 2040, according to a study by the Center for Climate Integrity.
The Virginia Oil & Gas Association, Columbia Gas, and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce are all represented by the firm Willcox & Savage, which also lobbies for the Virginia Government Employees Association.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) has testified against similar legislation creating Climate Superfunds in other states, such as New York and Vermont, and has helped defeat such legislation in several other states, such as New Jersey. In Virginia, API shares the firm MacGuireWoods Consulting with 15 local government clients, including Hampton, which faces an estimated $176 million in costs for mitigating rising seas by 2040.
“People in part of Virginia that have been hardest hit by the climate crisis are seeing their own tax dollars go to hiring lobbying firms who pledge allegiance to their local government, but also to fossil fuel companies,” said James Browning, Executive Director of F Minus. “Given the massive future costs of the climate crisis, this is a conflict.”
In 2024, an F Minus 50-state report card on state lobbyist disclosure systems ranked Virginia’s system 48th in the country with a grade of F-. The report card faulted the system for failing to make lobbyists disclose the bills on which they lobby, positions taken on these bills, and for failing to make lobbyists disclose their activities while the legislature is in session.