Thursday, September 02, 2010
Cuccinelli will visit, talk on energy issues
The town hall meetings will cover electricity rates and planned federal greenhouse gas legislation.
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Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will be in Southwest Virginia today, holding two town hall meetings to discuss electricity rates and proposed federal legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions.
Cuccinelli is scheduled to appear in Abingdon for a 9 a.m. meeting at Virginia Highlands Community College before traveling to Rocky Mount for a 1 p.m. meeting at the Franklin Center Lecture Hall. Local elected officials, business leaders and residents have been invited, according to the attorney general's office.
Cuccinelli will brief his audiences on the State Corporation Commission's approval of an Appalachian Power Co. base rate increase that went into effect Aug. 1. The SCC authorized a lower increase than Appalachian requested. Because an interim decrease in a fuel factor charge took effect the same day, the commission's ruling could reduce some residential electric bills. The attorney general's office represented consumers in the case.
Cuccinelli also plans to discuss federal legislation aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. The House of Representatives passed legislation last year that would create a cap-and-trade system to regulate carbon emissions, but the Senate has failed to act on the measure. The Republican attorney general has challenged the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger health.
The issue has become a key friction point in congressional races in both spots that Cuccinelli will visit today, but his office has said the meetings are official and not political.
Democratic congressmen Rick Boucher of Abingdon and Tom Perriello of Albemarle County have been criticized by their Republican challengers for backing the climate bill.
Perriello and Republican Robert Hurt of Chatham also have sparred over 2007 state legislation that established a new regulatory scheme for investor-owned electric utilities. Hurt, then a member of the House of Delegates, voted for the bill, which established a new hybrid regulatory scheme. The recent Appalachian base rate case was the first the company had filed under the new law.
