The Vermont Public Interest Research Group announced Saturday that it would form a separate nonprofit entity called VPIRG Votes to back candidates who share its members’ concerns about the climate crisis.
“We’re getting off the sidelines,” VPIRG executive director Paul Burns said Monday in an interview with Seven Days. “The board just felt that we were no longer doing the best service for our members by voluntarily sitting out the [electoral] process.”
That’s a departure for a nonprofit organization founded in 1972 that has limited itself to lobbying lawmakers on consumer and environmental issues important to its 50,000 members, such as reducing water pollution, shifting to renewable energy and encouraging open government.
But a growing concern that climate change is becoming an existential threat convinced the group’s board that it needed to take a more direct role in influencing elections, Burns said.
“We face an unprecedented climate crisis,” Ashley Orgain, chair of VPIRG’s board, says in the group’s launch video. “To protect our economy, our environment and future generations, we need to make changes.”
The video shows a map of the Northeast and says Vermont’s greenhouse gas emissions rose by 13 percent since 1990 while those of its neighbors have all declined. That trend has to change, but “many of our career politicians have shown they simply aren’t up to this challenge,” Kate Lapp, government reform associate for VPIRG, says in the video.
The group’s large canvassing operation has excelled at educating voters about issues important to members. It issues “scorecards” rating individual politicians on their environmental track records.
Still, “We’ve never endorsed a candidate for public office. That changes now,” Burns said in the video.
Canvassers have been “self-censoring” by not telling voters which candidates they should support. “Somebody would ask us, ‘Do you think I should vote for this person?’” Burns said. “And we had to assiduously avoid answering that question.”
VPIRG itself is has a 501(c)4 nonprofit federal tax status. But VPIRG Votes will be an IRS 527 organization, with more flexibility to engage in political activities, Burns said.
VPIRG staffers may work for both organizations, but the finances will remain separate, Burns said. The goal is not to cannibalize existing VPIRG fundraising sources but to find new ones.
The new organization will not accept donations from corporations, in keeping with VPIRG’s belief that they should not have an outsized influence on public policy.
Vermont is one of the few states capable of showing true leadership on climate, but so far it has failed to do so, Burns said. The goal is to change that.
“We’re hopeful that this year will be different, but we’re not willing to go on hope anymore,” he said.
Correction, January 21, 2020: This post has been updated to correct VPIRG’s tax-exempt classification, and to further clarify remarks from Burns about corporate donations.
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“ Vermont’s largest environmental advocacy organization announced plans to begin directly backing candidates for state office for the first time, a major shift from its past position of political neutrality “
Political neutrality?
It was Paul Burns who filed an erroneous ethics complaint against the governor which ultimately got dismissed.
So the moral of this story is if you can’t beat them in an election, then buy the election.
VPIRG is also a 501(c)3. Federal law limits 501(c)3s to spending no more than 20% of total expenses on lobbying, yet VPIRG has 9 lobbyists in the statehouse this year. 501(c)3s are also required to do nothing to influence elections. They can encourage people to vote, but cannot tell people to vote yes or no, or to vote for specific candidates.
How will the public know which “VPIRG” they are hearing from, such as when the canvassers come to their doors this summer. Canvassing has traditionally been done by the 501(c)3. Will VPIRG be pulling a bait and switch this year, paying their canvassers to work for the PAC this year? Will they tell the public that they are now working for a PAC and not the 501(c)3? Or the 501(c)4?
This is murky territory the so-called environmental organization is entering.
“So the moral of this story is if you can’t beat them in an election, then buy the election.”
VPIRG already co-owns the legislature (with its allies the teachers union and the state employees union). So why not own the statewide elected officials as well?
It’s interesting the pull this private corporation has in Vermont. If you look at their board of trustees, and then at the board of the Vermont Journalism Trust (dba Vermont Digger) you’ll see that they share board members. It’s why when Paul Burns called VtDigger and said he wanted a suitably compliant mouthpiece to release his presser pretending to be news (https://vtdigger.org/2020/01/08/vpirg-head…), Anne grabbed her notebook and ran on over.
It’s the nature of being funded by large lobbying organizations like VPIRG, High Meadows Fund, Johnson Family Foundation, Vermont Community Foundation, etc: they buy a seat on the board and then Anne is beholden to her donor whales to keep the lights on.
How can they call themselves an environmental group when they actively supported the weakening and undermining of Vermont’s landmark land use planning law, Act 250, not to mention Governor Kunin’s Act 200? How many tens of thousands of tax dollars were spent developing comprehensive plans, careful zoning regulations, wildlife consultants, wetlands mapping, creation of natural resources protection zoning, creation of open space protection zoning, etc.?
And VPIRG and their once pro-environment allies in the Democratic Party, people like Tony Klein (now retired), Chris Bray, etc. abandoned all of this. They supported the legislation to fast-track all industrial energy projects derived from wind or solar, regardless of zoning, regardless of Act 250, regardless of Comprehensive Plans. Total exemptions. There is nothing pro-environment about it.
The chair and vice chair do work for Unilever.