RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Republican Ken Cuccinelli proposed cuts to taxes and regulations on energy in the second policy statement of his campaign for governor Thursday in Virginia coal country.
In outlining his energy policy proposals in Bristol, Va., Cuccinelli also said he would compel the state’s ecological watchdog agency, the Department of Environmental Quality, to cushion adverse environmental findings about pending infrastructure projects with “positive indirect results” such as job creation or reduced congestion.
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In many ways, his policy rollout was a continuation of major themes from his tax policy news conference — the first of his gubernatorial run — one week ago. Again, he stressed tax cuts and arresting what he called regulatory overreach, at both the state and federal level for his dominant objective of job growth.
“The plan will empower Virginia job creators to take full advantage of the Commonwealth’s vast energy resources so they can invest in new technology and people,” Cuccinelli said in prepared remarks.
Long on general intentions and short on operational detail, Cuccinelli asserted Virginia’s right to unlock offshore oil and gas reserves and wind energy farms. He advocated development of clean energy options including nuclear, geothermal, biomass and clean-coal technology, but without subsidies from government.
The conservative attorney general’s vision of the future also evoked his own recent past. He pledged that he’ll oppose federal overreach on energy and environmental policy such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s bid to treat water runoff as a pollutant.
Cuccinelli won a federal court challenge in January against the EPA in a case involving drainage rights in Fairfax County. A judge ruled storm runoff isn’t pollution.
Advocates for environmental groups quickly attacked the proposals.
Glen Besa, the executive director of the Sierra Club Virginia chapter called it an “energy scheme … ripped straight out of the big polluters’ playbook.”
Last week, Cuccinelli said he supported flushing hard-to-reach natural gas reserves from southwestern Virginia national park lands through a hydraulic process known as fracking. That’s a technology that environmentalists claim causes lasting contamination to subterranean water supplies.
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Cuccinelli’s energy presentation: http://bit.ly/13zKnBm
