By Steve Haner,

Let me get this straight.  A main argument against letting Florida-based NextEra Energy buy Virginia-based Dominion Energy is that the giant and rich new company might be so politically powerful that it will corrupt Virginia’s governance processes.  That was the big argument from this fellow on the Richmond Times-Dispatch website.

Shall I tell him or would you like to?  What he writes about Florida Power and Light’s behavior pretty much parallels my 20 years of close observations, interactions and occasional outright conflicts with Dominion right here in Richmond.  FPL and Dominion are peas in a pod.

I remain skeptical that the size of the pod will matter to the average residential or business consumer.  The new corporate holding company executives will likely be little different from the ones we have now, who are going to get very, very rich off this transaction and scoot to their retirement.  But the wild west, anything goes environment has to disappear, and fast.

The proper and intelligent reaction to what is coming is to make it far more difficult for either Dominion, or NextEra after swallowing Dominion, to keep getting away with it. Virginia must fight the corruption across the board.  There must be:

• Strict campaign donation limits at all levels of politics, ending the ability of anybody – including the tech giants or rent-seeking renewable companies who also now hold great sway over our legislature – to buy friendly legislative or executive decisions.  
• Strict limits, perhaps a prohibition even, on the corporate charitable activities which are so often clearly designed to curry favor with this politician or that special interest group.
• A removal of the consumer protection function from the Office of the Attorney General, creating instead an independent and judicially appointed Consumer Counsel to join the lists at the State Corporation Commission. Our last Attorney General took too much money from Dominion, and this new one took too much from renewable energy corporations.  Nobody active at the SCC should be giving big bucks to the Attorney General while the AG is key player in cases. 
• A massive change in attitude at the State Corporation Commission toward claims that key data in case files must be held confidential and proprietary and thus invisible to the public.  Corporate claims of harm to their business interests are usually bogus, but the SCC goes along far too easily.  That must stop.  It shouldn’t take legislation to stop it, but absent any progress, the Assembly should intervene.  An independent consumer counsel could lead this charge.
• Far stronger lobbyist disclosure laws, diving deeper into efforts to influence regulatory matters and executive branch appointments. Our lobbying disclosure law has been a laughingstock my whole career.  To compare it to Swiss cheese insults the cheese because the law is largely all holes.
• Strict limits on the ability of the General Assembly to repeat this year’s game (and it was no accident, trust me) where big energy bills end up being buried in a delayed and then rushed secret budget process.  Having gotten away with that this year, unless stopped cold it will become routine for the utility and its friends in the legislature.  Governor Abigail Spanberger played along.

Those six reforms pass at the 2027 General Assembly, with some real teeth and a bipartisan commitment behind them, and many of the dangers – the political dangers anyway – rising from the sale of Dominion will diminish.  There are many other possible reforms, some equally effective, but listing those six makes the point. 

Dominion and NextEra should not be the only ones covered by these new rules.  The campaign finance limits and lobbyist disclosure changes should cover everybody.  They are hardly the only regulated entities giving money in the campaigns to pick the official “consumer counsel.”

NextEra or Dominion?  I really don’t think the average consumer is going to care in the long run or pay that much more or less whatever happens with this sale.  The cost of energy is rising for a host of reasons, many out of the state’s control.  The cost drivers which the state does control are beloved by the party in power, thus are not changing any time soon.  By the end of Governor Spanberger’s term, the cost of your power bill will be way higher than it is today.  It will be inflating many other costs in your family budgets. Virginia’s cost of energy will rise relative to competing states. 

My tenure as a “senior fellow” at the now-closed Thomas Jefferson Institute is over, so my speaking on behalf of that platform is done.  Any formal role with the Jefferson Forum that seeks to replace it will await the appointment of a new president, who may have little interest in the energy front or may disagree with my basic positions.  The right-wing nonsense grates on me just as much as the left-wing nonsense (no more coal, thank you). 

So why listen to me?  I started watching state politics closely 50 years ago last month, when I started at The Roanoke Times, started playing politics 40 years ago this month when I joined the Republican Party of Virginia staff as policy director and press secretary, was working inside the Office of Attorney General 25 years ago with my eyes open, and then 20 years ago started my deep dive into energy regulation on behalf of Newport News Shipbuilding. 

My concerns that our lax ethics laws invite corruption are fully based on that 50 years of experience and are totally bipartisan.  Both parties need the handcuffs and spotlights.  Perhaps the high stakes of this pending sale of our dominant utility will finally wake up the voters.  It is a perfect chance to try again.  Perhaps this message may fade away (again), but he who has ears, let him hear.