Supporters and opponents of clean heat policy spent big in this election

“We have too much work to do to waste time lying,” read the Grand Isle County newspaper The Islander last week.

The ad, paid for by State Rep. Josie Leavitt, D-Grand Isle, who is seeking re-election, said she supports a 2023 bill called the Affordable Heat Act. However, this law required a study on the proposed clean heat. It’s standard policy, not “a new tax on home heating oil” as its opponents describe it.

The years-long battle over the proposed clean heat standard, a policy aimed at reducing greenhouse gases from heating buildings, has shaped the campaigns and led super PACs on both sides of the issue to pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into local House and Senate campaigns. ahead of next week’s elections.

Leavitt said his campaign felt like “a fencing match,” with his ads part of back-and-forth conversations about the basic facts of various policies, including the clean heat standard. While other policy debates, including property taxes and education spending, appear to have more local roots, the debate over the clean heat standard mimics divisive national rhetoric, he said.

Members of Parliament took office setting a clean heat standard in 2022, and a single vote failed to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of a bill that would have signed the concept into law. In 2023, lawmakers successfully overrode a veto of a similar measure called the Affordable Heat Act, which directed the state’s Public Utilities Commission to study how a clean heat standard would work but did not actually implement it.

This election cycle, Leavitt and other Democratic candidates have received some well-funded, if unsolicited, help in distributing their messages.

In the legislative session that begins in January, a new slate of lawmakers to be elected next week is expected to consider the clean heat standard again, this time deciding whether to implement the program, modify it or abandon it altogether.

The complex policy would put carrots and sticks in place to transition heating systems in Vermont from propane, kerosene, heating oil and natural gas to systems that emit fewer plant heating pollutants, including electric heat pumps, home air conditioning, biofuels and others.

The environmental organization and super PAC Vermont Conservation Voters, which operates separately from the candidates’ campaigns, accepted $256,000 in donations and spent about $218,500 on ads, mailers, videos, door-to-door campaigns and other expenses. The organization used this money to encourage people to vote for individual candidates, particularly in Grand Isle, Rutland and Caledonia counties, to support candidates the organization had endorsed based on precinct voting records.

As for Vermont Public, nearly $180,000 came from the Washington, D.C.-based group Green Advocacy Project, a political nonprofit organization. previously reported. Funds from such groups are often referred to as “dark money” because the group is not required to disclose its donors.

Meanwhile, a different super PAC, Vermonters for Affordable Heat, spent about $11,300 of the $40,700 they had saved on paper products, postcards and a petition. They also point to other organizations, including larger energy companies, that support the clean heat standard, explaining why they are spending money on this campaign opposing the policy.

This follows spending by Americans For Prosperity, the super PAC founded by billionaires Charles and David Koch. The group ran a massive mail and digital campaign throughout the spring and summer urging lawmakers to oppose the clean heat standard. His efforts led to spending of more than $68,000, according to lobbying records at the State Department. Some of the organization’s materials contained incorrect information About the proposed policy.

While the Vermont Conservation Voters, part of the National League of Conservation Voters, are focusing on a variety of issues this election cycle — including ensuring “we have the largest pro-environment legislature we can ever have” — the clean heat standard is one of the most important to the organization, said Justin Marsh, the organization’s political director. He said it was one of the problems.

“The clean heat standard is of course a priority policy in general, so it is something we are working on and we expect it to take up most of our time and capacity in 2025 and these new two years,” they said. .

Marsh points to Americans for Prosperity as part of the reason Vermont Conservation Voters are upping the ante with this year’s campaign tactics, which are more comprehensive than in years past, and accepting money from the Green Advocacy Project.

“VCV supports broad campaign finance reform that would not permit the type of activity in which we participate,” they said. “But that’s also the landscape we’re in. So when one party participates in a broken system, it allows Vermonters to only hear that side of the story.”

Stephanie Austin, executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, said her organization is teaming up with Vermonters for Affordable Heat to educate voters.

“What is most important is that Vermonters have a way to understand this complex policy and what it will mean if fully implemented. That is why a modest amount of money is being spent to help share this information with Vermonters,” he wrote in emailed responses to questions.