Episode 29: How are Virginia citizens and activist groups impacting bills this year?

With the 2021 legislative session in full swing, hundreds of bills have been introduced into the General Assembly. Some have passed and some haven't--and some are yet to be debated. A lot of these bills are written and promoted by big-money industries and lobbying groups who have the time and money to spare. But this week on Bold Dominion, we dig into two examples of citizen activists who are making a difference in the legislature.

In the first half of the episode, Brennan Gilmore of Clean Virginia explains how his organization fights corruption in Virginia's government, especially as it deals with energy policy and Dominion. In the second half, we chat with Ashton Willcox, Matthew Savage, and Adrian Klaits, a group of bipartisan teenage political leaders who successfully introduced a bill that would Virginia students one excused absence every year to participate in civic engagement.

Episode Transcript

Nathan Moore: This is Bold Dominion, an explainer for state politics in a changing Virginia. I’m Nathan Moore.

 [intro music]  

Well, the General Assembly session is in full swing. We’re a month in, so hundreds of bills have been introduced. Many of them have passed. Many have been rejected. And many more are awaiting their fate, as lawmakers wrangle over the details.

Here at Bold Dominion, we struggle a little bit to figure out what to cover around this time of year. After all, this is a biweekly podcast, and there’s a firehose of legislation pouring forth right now.  There are definitely some highlights already. On the same day last week, the General Assembly voted on two major proposals -- one will eliminate the death penalty in Virginia. And the other will legalize cannabis in stages over the next few years.

In a few weeks, we’ll do a deeper dive into some of the big changes being wrought by this legislative session.  But today, we’re looking at how citizens and activist groups can actually make an impact on the bills that come before the Assembly. For sure, big corporations like Dominion and big lobbyists like MaguireWoods have the time, money, and self-interest to craft an awful lot of bills.   But groups of organized citizens can make a difference, too.

Ashton Willcox: We wanted to like set an example. You know, this is an important bill that should not be partisan. And, you know, we could make this a really good positive thing. As young teenage Democrats and young teenage Republicans are working together on something, it will set a better standard for those who are in leadership who are older than us.

NM:  That’s Ashton Wilcox, the Vice Chair of the Teenage Republican Federation of Virginia. In the second half of this episode, we’ll hear from him and two members of the Virginia Young Democrats. This past year, these teenage Democrats and Republicans came together to draft and push for a bill. It’s a bill that will allow students to take time off school in order to participate in civic engagement. Things like attending a protest, or lobbying their lawmaker. And cool news -- that bill passed. We’ll hear more about their remarkable story in the second half of this episode.  But first, we focus on one advocacy group pushing new legislation in this session. Clean Virginia is an organization dedicated to fighting corruption in Virginia’s government, particularly as it deals with energy policy and Dominion. This week, Bold Dominion producer Aaryan Balu sat down with Clean Virginia Executive Director Brennan Gilmore. Brenna talks about how they approach the many-pronged problems of corruption, campaign finance reform, and specific energy issues facing everyday Virginians.

Brennan Gilmore: Virginia's system of state government is structured to be very susceptible to corporate influence. And what does that mean? It means we have a part time legislature that works between one to two months out of the year in session. But otherwise is just part time. It's poorly staffed and poorly funded. And so who fills in the gap? Well, it's corporate lobbyists in many cases. These are large corporations that have tons of money to pump into races, and who have the expertise in many cases in the areas of law which these legislators are looking for expertise.

Unfortunately, it's not independent and objective expertise. It's expertise with a profit motive. And the worst example of this that we see in Virginia is with our monopoly utilities. These are different than other corporations and that they're not constrained by market forces. They have entered, a long time ago, into a pact with the government and the society to say: "We will have a monopoly in a certain area of service. And in turn for that we will have the rates that we charge and the rules of the road set by our regulators." But over time, these companies have been able to influence the legislature to essentially rewrite the rules to give them an unfair advantage. And the biggest paragon of this type of legalized corruption is Dominion Energy. It's pumped millions and millions of dollars into the legislature, and in exchange for that influence has been able to overcharge their captive customer base by millions of--billions of dollars. And it's that system of corporate influence that we as advocates, and as clean government watchdogs try to fight against.

Aaryan Balu:  What is it specifically that Clean Virginia is doing to combat that?

BG: We try and combat this problem in three different ways. First and foremost, as I mentioned, the legislature when they're writing laws about energy or utility issues, they have historically relied on lobbyists from these energy companies with a very biased motive. So we try to work with allies and partners to provide independent and objective analysis on laws so that we can create better laws which don't put shareholder or profit interests first. Rather, they put the interests of every Virginian first.

Secondly, we're trying to build a movement in Virginia so every Virginian knows and understands this issue. They know and understand how our government has gotten off track, how the system in in Richmond is skewed against their interests, and then, you know, what they can do in terms of advocating in a democratic system for better laws. Nothing is as persuasive to legislators as their constituents who have to vote for them really bringing energy and attention to these issues.

Third, we try from our political action committee to fight fire with fire. What we are doing is responding to a movement of a new generation of very dynamic legislators who first and foremost put their constituents first and they stepped out and campaign said: "We're not going to take this money. If we have a regulated utility or regulated energy company like Dominion, we're expected to go into that body and legislate on issues that govern their profits. And so we should not be taking their money." So we recognize that, but also didn't want them to have to unilaterally disarm in a campaign. If they're not taking the money their opponent very well may be--and may be more susceptible to that that untoward influence. So we have a campaign finance program where we essentially say: "If this is your principled stance, if you're not going to take this dirty, regulated utility money, then we will make up the gap."

AB: What is kind of the key difference in terms of the tactics that you use versus other corporate lobbying groups like McGuireWoods?

BG: The big difference is what you mentioned: they're corporate and we're nonprofit. There's a lot of what they call "social welfare organizations" that give money into the political system to elect candidates that they think are going to put these issues first. They don't have any profit motive--it's the profit motive that really corrupts the process here. Because first and foremost, these nonprofit organizations have to prove--they have to by their organizing principles and their tax status, they have to show that they are advocating for social welfare. So first and foremost, always in the minds of these organizations is, you know, "what is best for the good of society as a whole?" That's also supposed to be first and foremost in the minds of our democratic representatives and elected leaders.

The corporate contributors into our system, they have a fiduciary and statutory responsibility to make as much money as possible. They have to do that--this is what they tell their shareholders that they're going to do when they buy their stock. And so their participation in a government is in no way comparable to those organizations that have to try and promote the welfare of the society as a whole. That's not to say that there's not differing views on what is the best approach to any given governance issue. But it is holistically different than an organization that looks at a body like the Virginia General Assembly and says: "How can I manipulate this body effectively, so I can maximize my profit?"

AB: Clean Virginia has something like ten bills--from what I saw on your website--for the 2021 legislative session. What are some of those bills? And what is the process of making them?

BG: We approach our legislative advocacy in sort of two different ways. First is on energy and regulatory issues specifically. What's happened over the past few decades in Virginia is what we call regulatory capture. It's where these monopoly utilities who are supposed to be responsive to and governed by regulators--in the case of Virginia, the State Corporation Commission--they manipulate the system in a way that allows them to essentially self-regulate. And so our bills first and foremost are trying to restore the proper regulatory authority to the State Corporation Commission.

So we have five bills now, which will restore that balance. And what that means for an average Virginian is they will be paying an appropriate price for their electricity and they can be assured that if they are charged too much in the future, that money will come back to them. That's not the case now. The second area that we work in is campaign finance reform and ethics. Again, we can address the laws that are broken, that govern energy and utility issues in Virginia. But they're always going to be susceptible to that influence if we don't reform the system of campaign finance and ethics that allows these lobbyists from the utility companies to have so much influence. So we're looking at things like banning corporate contributions, specifically banning contributions from regulated utilities that are in a whole separate category from just average corporations. And then doing things to strengthen the legislature. I began this conversation by talking about how the Virginia legislature is very susceptible to nefarious and corporate influence. What we're trying to do in the long term is confront that influence by reforming the structure of the system. So we have a bill that bans the personal use of campaign finance by politicians--and that seems kind of absurd, it's illegal federally, it's illegal in most other states. Unfortunately, Virginia is is really ranked quite low in terms of its strength in this area, in the area of campaign finance, and ethics. We're trying to change that.

AB: Can you walk me specifically through your role as an advocacy organization, and then how that eventually gets translated into a legislator sponsoring a bill on the floor of the House?

BG: Sure. So advocacy organizations can work with the legislature in a number of different ways. First and foremost, if we're going to be advocating for any specific law, we have to register as lobbyists. We want people to understand what our mission is, what we're advocating for, and see who, you know, we're talking to, who we're contributing funding to, and work in a very transparent manner. So we interact with legislators. We try to provide them independent and objective information. We talk to those who are interested in reforming the areas that we're interested in reforming. And together, we develop ideas that turn into legislation. We then you know, try to build support in our community of supporters and volunteers and more broadly in the public in Virginia, to support those types of reforms. Their General Assembly session moves quick, it's very chaotic often, and bills move fast. And we want folks to be paying attention, to be ready to weigh in, and to be strong advocates for these issues with their legislators. And so what we do as an advocacy organization is probably an equal balance of reaching out to the public to build support for ideas, and also engaging with legislators and their staff to try and get these bills through and passed into law.

AB: How, if at all, has this process changed with the General Assembly turning to mostly Democratic control?

BG: Well, the problems that we face in terms of ethics, campaign finance, transparency and corporate influence, exist on both sides of the aisle. You know, we would have liked to see a lot more progress in campaign finance reform, and in addressing what I had discussed in terms of the regulatory capture of our utilities. But so far, we haven't seen much progress.

We have seen a lot of progress in other areas--in clean energy in particular, you know, we've seen emissions standards set, renewable portfolio standard set, with a landmark bill last year, the Virginia Clean Economy Act. But we would like to see this type of approach to be lower-cost and more equitable. And so we're still working to confront the dominant power of the utilities in the way this goes forward.

AB: Has the passage of the Clean Economy Act in its form last year--has that made it more difficult to get some kind of amendment or law passed to bring control back to the State Corporation Commission?

BG: No, in fact, I think it probably has shown that we have an imperative to lower the cost of energy. We're in a pandemic. We're in an economic crisis. We know that people's bills are going up. A lot of people and frankly, a lot of legislators, they don't feel that impact. They're in, you know, the wealthier segment of society that doesn't have to think day to day about whether they're going to make their payment at the end of the month. Unfortunately, a lot of Virginians don't have that luxury. And with the Virginia Clean Economy Act on the back of several other laws, which have created a really, really surging price of electricity in this state, we're, you know, going to have some serious problems for a lot of these households in Virginia.

So I think there's a lot of legislators that understand what these new clean and clean energy mandates and the mess that Dominion has created with electrical bills, by their greed over the past decade, we've got to address this problem now. So that's not to say that it's easy. There's a lot of very strong allies of Dominion in the legislature. But I do think there's a growing recognition that this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed or the economic health of Virginian families.

AB: What is Clean Virginia looking at for this legislative session, and then in the coming future?

BG: So this legislative session, we're very focused on these rate reform bills. Dominion will sit down with their regulators and try to get as high of a rate as they can during what's called a rate case later this year. We want the rules for that rate case, to be fair for the consumer. And so we're very focused on trying to get the fairest deal as possible coming out of this General Assembly session. Secondly, we're trying to create a cleaner government by passing ethics and campaign finance reform. Those are our two main goals for this legislative session. Moving forward, these are still the areas that we're going to work on, we're going to have a lot of work to do in the coming years to create a system of state government that is more responsive to the needs of the average Virginian and less responsive to corporate interests. That means that there's going to be some systematic reforms that need to take place, and that's what Clean Virginia's long-term vision is.

NM: Brennan Gilmore is the executive director of Clean Virginia, an advocacy organization that fights state corruption and works on the nexus of clean government and clean energy.

 [fade up midtro]

You’re listening to Bold Dominion, a state politics explainer for a changing Virginia. Visit us online at BoldDominion.org. Have a friend who’s trying to figure out Virginia state politics? Tell them about this show. And then subscribe in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever fine podcasts are served up. And while you’re there, why not leave a five-star review?  

Bold Dominion is a member of the Virginia Audio Collective, online at Virginia Audio dot org. Check out all the podcasts from the collective, including In My Humble Opinion. It’s a weekly talk show from the folks at 101 Jamz, Charlottesville’s station for hip-hop and R&B. Hosted by Charles Lewis, Max, and Razor, In My Humble Opinion covers all sorts of Charlottesville public affairs conversations. Listen and subscribe at VirginiaAudio.org.

[fade out midtro]

 Well, the General Assembly session this year is both short and virtual. Every bill on the docket is fighting for some prime real estate. Any organization getting their bill to the floor is an impressive feat.  It’s even more impressive when that organization is led by a bipartisan group of teenagers.

Ashton Wilcox, Matthew Savage, and Adrian Klaits are three young leaders in the Virginia’s Teenage Republican Federation and Young Democrats Teen Caucus. Their bill would give Virginia students one excused absence every year to participate in civic engagement. Things like attending protests or lobbying lawmakers or election day volunteering.  Thanks to their efforts, the bill has garnered broad bipartisan support and is currently on the floor of the General Assembly. Earlier this week, I chatted with these three young activists to learn how and why the bill came together in the first place -- and what it might mean for the future.  I’ll let them introduce themselves so you can put a voice with the name.

Ashton Willcox: I'm Ashton Wilcox, I'm the Vice Chair of the Teenage Republican Federation of Virginia.

Matthew Savage: My name is Matthew Savage. I'm the Chairman of the Virginia Young Democrats Teen Caucus.

Adrian Klaits: I'm Adrian, I'm the Vice Chair of the Teen Caucus.

NM: Take me through the issue--sort of the problem that you all looked out at Virginia and said, "that's a problem. We should do something about that."

AK: I think in recent years, we've seen civic engagement amongst students increase. We saw it after the Parkland shootings, and I think 2018 we've seen it with climate change as well. And I think part of that has been cited as a liberal cause, which, I think us being here today, all three of us proves that civic engagement isn't necessarily a Republican or Democratic cause. But what the problem is, is that the Virginia General Assembly and the United States Congress, they meet Monday through Friday, during the school day, during the regular school hours of the day. So there's no real opportunity for students who are interested in public policy or making a difference, to go to their legislator to actually lobby for change. And that's what this civic engagement bill is about.

AW: Yeah, I think that a lot of people play off kids--especially kids that are like under 18 and are still in high school--as: "They can't get involved. They don't have a voice, you know, their voice doesn't matter." And I think that's the farthest thing from the truth. Because we're the future of the country. And we need to be able to, you know, speak our opinions to the General Assembly, to everything. And this shouldn't just be like: "Oh, they're all liberal." But I think that as a conservative, I want to be able to go lobby for my causes as well. And if, you know, if I can't do that, because the school system doesn't allow me to do that. That's not good. And that's especially why we teamed up.

NM:  Alright, so I want to hear kind of the step-by-step, how this happened. You all--the three of you are really engaged, obviously, you're, you know, sort of youth leaders in a statewide party organization. You know, it's just like: "Hey, I want to be involved in stuff. But I got to go to geometry class." I mean, what was the genesis of this?

MS: So this policy had been implemented in Fairfax County where Adrian and I attend school. It's been in place now for over a year. So we've seen firsthand how this has energized students--before the pandemic and during the pandemic--to get involved with public policy and politics. Students at my school, after the General Assembly ratified the Equal Rights Amendment last year, went to the United States Capitol to lobby senators to remove the deadline for the ratification of the ERA. So we were able to energize our classmates to get involved in that national level, ERA public policy.

But we started this movement...we were on a FaceTime call and July, kind of just looking for no reason at education bills that passed the General Assembly in 2020, and I saw delegate Mark Keam's bill that requires public schools to provide feminine hygiene products in bathrooms. And I thought: "That's something Fairfax County did last year. It worked. So they tried it statewide." And I thought about other things that Fairfax County had done that were successful, and civic engagement was the first thing that came to mind. So Adrian and I and a few other Democrats wrote a resolution explaining what we were asking for, giving some statistics on the policy in Fairfax County, how it worked, how it didn't have any downsides.

Then we sent that to legislators. A lot of legislators at that time said: "I like this idea, but circle back after the special session." But a few legislators, notably Sam Rasoul and Jennifer McClellan, said: "I'm going to put this in to get a draft bill in for the 2021 session."

NM: Ashton, how did the youth wing of the Republican Party in Virginia get into this?

AW: So they followed us on Twitter. So we are very active on Twitter and we saw that they followed us, so I gave them a follow back. And then I said: "Sup?" And then they said: "Oh, hello, like, we want to be like, civil, and let's, you know, build a better future for America." And then they sent us the bill, they were like: "Would you be interested in this bill?" And we were like: "Yeah, just shoot us an email at our email." And so they emailed us. And then we all met as a board, because there's an executive board of around five of us, we said: "Wow, we really love this bill."

And we've, you know, seen at the national level, the chaos and the divisiveness, I think from both sides, but, you know, especially with our side recently. We wanted to, like, set it example. You know, this is an important bill that should not be partisan. And, you know, we could make this a really good positive thing as young teenage Democrats and young teenage Republicans are working together on something, it will set a better standard for those who are in leadership who are older than us.

All you see in the news today is about how one politician tweets about the other politician or one politician hates the other politician, and that divisiveness has really, you know, blown up to, you know, events, like the Capitol, for example. And so we want to set a better new standard of being civil and working with the other side. Because if you can't work with the other side, at the end of the day, you're really not going to get anything done.

NM: Ashton, did you get your committees and lawmakers to sign up for this as well?

AW: So we did have two co-sponsors, but the co-sponsor, like, weirdly voted against it. And then the other co-sponsor dropped but we did get bipartisan support in the House on it. We were calling our whole caucus all day, every day to get their support. I called every member of the House...what sucks on our side, you know that some people will view this bill as like some like, liberal type thing that's gonna make the radical liberals protests or something. But like, it's really not that and I was happy to see, you know, a lot of state senators are respect vote for the bill on our side. So...

MS: Four Republican senators voted for it in the House, eight Republican delegates voted for it.

NM: What do you hope comes from this? What...there's sort of the obvious change that now you can go do a protest or lobby your lawmaker, and that's considered an excused absence from school. But what do you hope changes?

AK: I hope that this energizes teens to get out to make a difference, because if we can do it, certainly, they can.

AW: Yeah, I'll have to agree with Adrian there. You know, I hear a lot of my friends say: "Well, why would I get involved in politics, I'm not going to have a voice. They're not going to listen to me." But the thing is, they really will. And it's great living in this country because you can use it. You can talk to your legislators--even local issues are going to impact your family.

MS: I hope middle and high school students really get to know that government--when we think of government, we think President, Congress, Supreme Court, but I hope they get to realize that government is local, that it includes the School Board, the Board of Supervisors, the House of Delegates, the State Senate, the governor, that includes Soil and Water Conservation Board, and I hope students can get a better sense of what government means and the decisions that government makes and the impact that those decisions have on everyone's everyday lives.

NM:  This kind of bill, where it's basically about civics and sort of just general pro-democracy measures, without a lot of cost or...really shouldn't be a huge controversy. I can see that being a nice nice way for Teen Republican Federation and the Young Democrats to come together. What other kinds of stuff do you think might...I mean, is there a possibility for working together on?

MS: We've already started work --and it actually passed the House of Delegates --a bill  that would allow the pre-registration of voters at age 16. They'll complete a pre-registration form. And then once they turn 18, or they turn 17, and they can vote in that primary, they're automatically added to the voter roster.

NM: Ashton, I don't--I don't want to put you on the spot too hard. But some of the GOP lawmakers have been opposed to easier voting. And in this case of the bill you all introduced to pose to, you know, letting students have an excused day off. How has your relationship been with some of the older party leaders on some of these issues?

AW: I definitely think that, you know, as--we need to reform our party, and we need to build it back better than it has been for the past few years. But I hope that, you know, this issue becomes less partisan, and that we decide to not focus in on it as much because getting young people involved, and then trying to like, do these weird bills that like limit them is not going to enable people to vote Republican.

At the end of the day, you're not gonna have much of Republican voters, if you're telling me you can't vote. So I think at the end of the day, expanding access to the ballot box like we have been and doing this 16-year-old preregistration will set a good standard, you know, for the state party and for delegates in our caucus and for state senators, because I think, you know, it shows that: "Wow, teenage Republicans that are going to vote for us, and that are going to support us are supporting this measure. So we better support it, because they are going to be you know, our voices, the young voices for us." So I think that at the end of the day, they...they may not say it, but I think they're recognizing that teenagers, you know, I'm not more liberal, but they're...if they're conservative, they're focusing on different issues, then, you know, access to the ballot box.

Because I, you know, I'm, I'm a Christian. And I also believe in democracy and, you know, being able to vote because I've...you know, I have friends and family who have come from places where you can't vote, or you don't have that act, right. So I think that being able to vote is one of the most crucial things you can do as an American. So that's why I'm working with them on this effort.

NM: Well, I guess last word, last thoughts on what comes next? Well, you're hoping for Virginia?

AK: Well, I think this partnership is certainly going to continue, probably become an annual connection. And we're going to start organizing before the General Assembly more frequently.

AW: I definitely think that, you know, we're, you know, our two groups are now even working more than ever, you know, we've ever seen, especially Republicans or Democrats, I think that we're proud of ourselves, both sides. Now, I'm really proud of what the Democrats have done for us, and I'm sure vice versa, you know, to help, you know, set a standard, and as I mentioned that before, but I think that, you know, if we continue to work on bills, it won't be like the staunch issues that like...guns or taxes, but it will be like these bills, like civic engagement bills that we can take a lead on and be the young people to speak on behalf of both sides. So the bills...you've seen young people come together for not just a reason, but a bigger reason than the parts and stuff.

MS: And I really hope that Virginia can be a goldfish bowl for the rest of the country. Teenage Republicans in Virginia, Teenage Democrats testified together that people in Washington on both sides can take a look at how we've been doing things here. And follow our example.

AW: Yeah. And to quickly add on to Matt, I think that watching everyone testify together, Democrats and Republicans, might have been one of like the proudest moments, you know, as an American I've ever seen. Because, you know, me, Matt and Adrian might not agree on like, tax policy, gun control, or said issue. We agree on this. And we came together and we fought for something that we all believe in that should happen for younger people across the Commonwealth. I felt proud to be a part of something that was bigger than all of ourselves.

NM: Ashton Wilcox is the Vice Chair of the Teenage Republican Federation of Virginia. Matthew Savage and Adrian Klaits are the Chairman and Vice Chair of the Virginia Young Democrats Teen Caucus. Thanks also to Brennan Gilmore, who joined us for the first half of the show.

My name’s Nathan Moore, and I’m the host of Bold Dominion. Big thanks as always to our producer Aaryan Balu. Find this show online at BoldDominion.org. Go ahead and subscribe… it’s just a click away.  And hey! We’re always on the lookout for topics for future episodes. You can send your ideas to our email address -- BoldDominion@virginia.edu. That’s BoldDominion@virginia.edu. You can also direct message us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram...we use 'em all.

 Keep social distancing, y'all. And I’ll talk with you again in two weeks!