The Governor has removed two members of the Air Pollution Control Board after those members voiced unfavorable views of the Buckingham Compressor station planned for the town of Union Hill. VA League of Conservation Voters and Sierra Club have been quite vocal about it, Jennifer Boysko has tweeted about it, and so has Al Gore referencing an article in the Washington Post.
You, dear reader might have heard that those members had expired terms, which is true, but there are currently 235 other appointees with expired terms who didn’t seem set to exercise their authority to stop a massive pollution source. This is a clear abuse of power on the part of the Governor. Northam might think we’re all stupid, but we aren’t.
Most of our legislators up here are Democrats lately, and I’m a Democrat as well. So far it seems that only Jennifer Boysko and Mark Keam have said anything publicly about the Governors subterfuge. I would love to know what Delegates John Bell, David Reid, and Wendy Gooditis think about this whole matter of the Governor so clearly putting his thumb on the scale to ram through Dominions compressor station. Mark Keam put it quite elegantly: “To me, the decision by Governor Northam to fire appointees of the State Air Pollution Control Board who disagree with him right before they were about to vote on a major environmental racial justice issue is absolutely wrong, and there simply is no way to explain it away.”
