EMP S3E5: Clean Virginia's Brennan Gilmore discusses recently passed legislation ending Dominion Virginia Power's decade-long reign as an unregulated monopoly

More than ten years ago, Dominion Energy convinced Virginia lawmakers to clip the wings of the state's utility regulator, the State Corporation Commission. After a decade in which Virginia Power overcollected on its rates as an unregulated monopoly, the Legislature in Richmond had finally had enough and passed legislation restoring the SCC's utility ratemaking authority. 

In this episode, Brennan Gilmore, executive director of the advocacy group Clean Virginia, discusses this lost decade when Dominion obtained virtually everything it wanted in Richmond and overcollected in rates nearly $2 billion, and details the efforts of his group and a vast coalition of other interests in working to successfully pass  legislation restoring the SCC's authority to oversee Virginia Power's rates in the public interest.

Gilmore, in a statement heralding passage of the legislative package, proclaimed: "For far too long Dominion Energy has wielded its political influence and contributions to write the rules of its own regulation. This year's legislative session has shown definitely that this era of self-regulation has come to an end."

"We've been fighting for this and we've been fighting to minimize Dominion’s political influence, and have been pushing back at them on the electoral playing field where the utility, I think, plays an outsized and inappropriate role, in hopes that we could get to a place where we would have good policy that protected consumers in Virginia," Gilmore tells EMP. "I've worked on this every day for the last four to five years. I didn't think it was going to happen this soon."

Gilmore gives credit for the outcome to involvement by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who took an active role in the negotiations that produced the compromise legislative package, calling the Republican the first governor in years – whether Republican or Democrat – who has not been "asleep at the wheel" while Dominion obtained a succession of bills benefiting the utility's shareholders at the expense of the utility's electricity consumers.

But he also gives credit to the changing face of the Virginia Legislature, which has seen an upswell in elected officials who disavow taking campaign contributions from utilities. Clean Virginia provided an important campaign finance alternative for politicians seeking office in Richmond. But Gilmore notes that his advocacy group was part of a huge coalition advocating for reform, including the Virginia Manufacturers Association, Google and Amazon, the Sierra Club and others. "It was basically any institution or organization or individual who pays an electric bill in the state was against that Dominion legislation," he says.

Clean Virginia's efforts to restore the public interest in utility oversight doesn't stop with this initial victory, Gilmore says, noting the face of the Legislature is changing in Richmond, with redistricting prompting retirement of Dominion "stalwart allies" amid a dramatic upsurge in candidates who refuse to accept contributions from utilities. This makes him optimistic that future legislative triumphs will be in store for the Commonwealth's captive ratepayers. But until the day there is an "equitable campaign finance system," Gilmore says, Clean Virginia will continue to "fight fire with fire ... and put money on the table so that utilities aren't the only option to get into office."

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