“We have too much work to do to waste time lying,” read an advertisement in the Grand Isle County newspaper The Islander last week.
The ad, paid for by state Rep. Josie Leavitt, D-Grand Isle, as she seeks re-election, said she had supported a law called the Affordable Heat Act in 2023. But that law simply required a study about the proposed clean heat standard policy, not a “new tax on home heating fuel,” as she said her opponents have described it.
Years of battle over the proposed clean heat standard, a policy aimed at reducing greenhouse gases that come from heating buildings, have shaped campaigns — and prompted super PACs on both sides of the issue to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars into local House and Senate campaigns ahead of next week’s election.
Leavitt said her campaign has felt like “a fencing match,” in which her advertisements are part of a back-and-forth about the basic facts of various policies, including the clean heat standard. While other policy debates, including over property taxes and education spending, seem to have more local roots, the debate about the clean heat standard mimics divisive national rhetoric, she said.
Lawmakers began mulling a clean heat standard in 2022, and failed by a single vote to override Gov. Phil Scott’s veto of a bill that would have established the concept as law. In 2023, lawmakers successfully overrode a veto of a similar measure, called the Affordable Heat Act, which directed the state’s Public Utility Commission to study how a clean heat standard would work, but didn’t actually implement it.
This election cycle, Leavitt and other Democratic candidates have had some well-funded — though unsolicited — help in getting their message distributed.
During the legislative session that begins in January, a new slate of lawmakers — to be elected next week — are expected to consider the clean heat standard again, and this time, decide whether to implement the program, change it, or abandon it altogether.
The complex policy would introduce carrots and sticks in an effort to transition heating systems in Vermont from propane, kerosene, heating oil and natural gas to those that emit fewer plant warming pollutants, including electric heat pumps, home weatherization, biofuels and others.
Operating separately from the candidates’ campaigns, the environmental organization and super PAC Vermont Conservation Voters has accepted $256,000 in donations and has spent almost $218,500 on a mix of ads, mailers, videos, door-to-door canvassing and other expenses. The organization has used the money to encourage people to vote for individual candidates — particularly in Grand Isle, Rutland and Caledonia counties — to support candidates the organization has endorsed based on their environmental voting records.
About $180,000 has come from the Washington D.C.-based group Green Advocacy Project, a political nonprofit, as Vermont Public previously reported. Funding that comes from such groups is often called “dark money” because the group does not have to disclose its donors.
Meanwhile, a different super PAC, Vermonters for Affordable Heat, has spent around $11,300 out of their amassed $40,700 on paper products, postcards and a petition. They, too, point to other organizations, including larger energy companies that support the clean heat standard, to explain why they’ve spent money in this campaign opposing the policy.
That follows on spending by Americans For Prosperity, a super PAC founded by billionaires Charles and David Koch. The group conducted a large mail and digital campaign through the spring and summer that urged lawmakers to oppose the clean heat standard. Their efforts resulted in more than $68,000 in expenditures, according to lobbying records with the Secretary of State’s Office. Some of the organization’s materials contained incorrect information about the proposed policy.
While Vermont Conservation Voters, which is part of the national group League of Conservation Voters, is focused on a variety of issues this election cycle — including ensuring “that we have the largest pro-environmental legislature that we can have” — the clean heat standard is a top issue for the organization, said Justin Marsh, the organization’s political director.
“The clean heat standard, in general, of course, is a priority policy, so it’s something that we are working on and are expecting to be taking up a lot of our time and capacity in 2025 and in this new biennium,” they said.
Marsh points to Americans for Prosperity as part of the reason why Vermont Conservation Voters has upped the ante with this year’s campaign tactics, which are more broad than they’ve been in past years, and accepted money from the Green Advocacy Project.
“VCV supports broad campaign finance reform that wouldn’t allow the sort of activity that we’re participating in,” they said. ”But at the same time, that’s the landscape that we exist in. So one side participating in a broken system really only allows Vermonters to hear that one side of the story.”
Stephanie Austin, executive director of the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association, said her organization has been involved 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 would mean if fully implemented. Which is why a modest amount of money has been spent to help share this information with Vermonters,” she wrote in emailed responses to questions.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Supporters and opponents of clean heat policy have spent big this election.