Many of Virginia’s elected officials showed an increase in their support of conservation bills promoted by the Virginia League of Conservation Voters (VALCV), according to its 2008 conservation scorecard. The league recognized a record number of delegates and legislators supporting all bills it endorsed as legislative heroes, totaling forty delegates and one senator.
Percentages on the scorecard reflect how closely legislators’ voting habits coincided with the opinions of VALCV, according to Lisa Guthrie, the league’s executive director.
“I think citizens need to be informed impartially on now a delegate in voting so they can hold their legislators accountable,” Guthrie says.
While VALCV is based in Richmond, Guthrie says they work with many groups to decide which bills they should support and try to act as an impartial bipartisan third party. Guthrie says many of this year’s legislative heroes are Democrats but that Republicans held the majority of heroes in last year’s report, according to her opening letter to the scorecard. She says she hopes that the scorecard will provide a way for community members to learn about their legislators’ voting habits and take action to promote conservation as an important political issue.
Scores show Senator Creigh Deeds increased from 60 percent last year to 89 percent in the most recent report. The voting patterns of Charlottesville area delegates David Toscano and Rob Bell differ markedly from one another: Democratic delegate Toscano was named a legislative hero, showing an increase from receiving a score of 75 percent last year; however, Rob Bell supported only half of the bills VALCV decided to endorse this year.
Bell says he is not terribly concerned with this year’s results and the scorecard is one of dozens of reports coming out this time of year. Last year Bell voted in agreement with VALCV on 80 percent of the league’s supported bills, and holds an overall percentage of 48.
Bell says scorecards are not very representative of how citizens feel about his voting patterns and, “in terms of whether people are happy, it’s going to be based on individual bills,” rather than general reports.
As with most bills, Bell says legislators try to get as much information as possible and sometimes receive quite a bit of it, but other times the process is very fast and decisions need to be made quickly. Also, Bell says, he was not responsible for any of the bills VALCV supported this year.
“I don’t draw any big things from this,” Bell says. “I’m not any different this year.”
