Virginia could be about to leave on the table $300 million of low-cost federal financing to tackle climate change because Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the General Assembly take different views on a proposal for how to access the money.
Surovell is proposing the new entity to tap the Department of Energy’s offer of low interest rate loans to finance clean energy projects, investments in reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and similar efforts.
The governor wanted to amend the measure, to require a second vote by the General Assembly next year. The state Senate rejected that — now, it is up to Youngkin to decide whether to sign it, veto it or let it become law without his signature.
Surovell said his conversations with Youngkin’s policy team turned on who would oversee the new bank — the governor, through the Department of Energy, or a citizen board, with members appointed by the legislature and the governor.
“That’s the way we’ve done things for years,” Surovell said. “He doesn’t seem to want to understand that.”
Youngkin wants to coordinate access
Youngkin is concerned about coordinating state access to funding, press secretary Christian Martinez said.
“While the Governor has until May 17th to act on legislation returned to his desk by the General Assembly, he believes Virginia is best positioned to access federal funding when our agencies cooperate rather than compete against each other for the same funding opportunities for energy projects,” Martinez said.
“This legislation creates another entity to apply for federal grants whose applications would directly compete against applications by Virginia Energy,” he added.
Surovell’s measure, Senate Bill 729, would empower the bank to arrange grants, loans or credit enhancements to leverage federal and other sources to finance clean energy.
The bank would be overseen by a 12-member board, with four residents, who are not legislators, named by the state Senate’s Rules Committee; four other non-legislators named by the speaker of the House of Delegates; and one named by the governor, with the remaining seats held by the director of the Department of Energy, the chief executive of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and the state Treasurer or a designee.
The bill passed the Senate and House with bipartisan support, while the Senate rejected the governor’s amendment on a mainly party-line split.
Meanwhile, Youngkin’s amendments to the General Assembly budget would have axed $10 million the assembly wanted to launch the clean energy bank. The legislature’s budget is on ice after both sides agreed to start afresh with a clean slate for a budget to be presented in the special session that begins May 13.
Youngkin’s budget amendment came in a portion of that 700-page document that was a particular focus of Surovell as chair of the Senate Finance Committee’s panel on general government spending.
That portion included Youngkin’s original proposal, made back in December, for a $150 million pool of funds for unspecified information technology projects across state government. Two members of Youngkin’s Cabinet were to allocate the money.
Surovell saw this as an overreach by the governor to take control of spending that normally would be handled by appropriations for specific projects by the General Assembly.
“It’s important to know how much and what timelines” are for projects, he said.
The General Assembly also transferred $20 million for events to mark the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution — that Youngkin proposed to draw from a central pool — to a bucket within the budget that comes directly under the legislature.
The learning curve
“He’s acting like a corporate CEO,” Surovell said. “That’s not the way we do things in Virginia.”
John McGlennon, a political scientist at the College of William & Mary, said: “I’ve heard the same about the Governor’s M.O. and how that has affected his relations with the GA.”
He added: “Youngkin has never held public office before or been deep into party politics, and that makes for a steep learning curve.” He added: “As best I can tell, no Virginia governor has had less political experience — as an elected official, a previous candidate or a party leader — than Governor Youngkin.”
Surovell is not the only legislator who has been complaining about Youngkin’s corporate executive style. Earlier this year, Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, chair of the Senate Finance & Appropriations Committee, spoke about Youngkin’s failed proposal to move Washington’s ice hockey and basketball teams to a new arena in Alexandria.
“I just felt like from the beginning he thought he could circumvent me,” Lucas said.
“This is not the Carlyle Group,” she added, referring to the private equity company that Youngkin previously led as co-CEO. “This is the Virginia legislature.”
While tensions between Virginia’s one-term governors and legislators have a long tradition, political analysts say they have reached a new level recently.
“There is a belief that the administration generally operates in a top-down, noncollaborative fashion in which its quote business principles unquote override the accumulated knowledge of legislators and agency professionals,” said Bob Holsworth, a longtime Virginia political analyst and a former professor and dean at Virginia Commonwealth University.
That tension is built into a relationship between a governor with four years to accomplish goals and a legislature whose members expect to stay in office much longer, he said.
“To succeed, a governor has to convince legislators that what he or she wants is in their own political self-interests,” said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. “It’s nothing like being the boss of a big company.”
He added: “Governing is shared between the branches, never dictated from the top. Youngkin started his term playing to the conservative base, often nationally, rather than looking for areas of common ground with legislators in the other party who have had the ability to resist his agenda, and now seem to take pleasure in doing so.
“It didn’t have to be this way.”
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