Coal Giant Southern Company Finds Loophole in Lobbying Disclosures
From the Energy and Policy Institute:
Southern Company faces another challenge to improve its limited lobbying disclosures at the company’s upcoming Annual Meeting of Stockholders on May 27, according to a filing by Majority Action. Southern’s current lobbying disclosure policy allowed for secret expenditures to the Utility Air Regulatory Group, which litigated against environmental regulations. The company does not publish or report total lobbying expenditures in Alabama or Georgia despite employing almost 50 lobbyists in the two states, according to state records.
Southern Company’s low- to no lobbying disclosures have enabled lobbying activity that has been discordant with the policy objectives that the company has espoused to investors and the public. Southern has actively lobbied against environmental regulations and action on climate change at the federal level. The company’s state-level disclosures offer almost no indications of whether the company’s state lobbying follows its federal pattern or aligned with Southern’s stated corporate “low- to no-carbon” goals. Southern’s operating companies, Alabama Power, Georgia Power, and Mississippi Power have ignored the company’s “low- to no-carbon” goal, according to their own statements to regulators.
This may seem like a minor infraction, and indeed it may be one. But it’s a reminder of what we’re up against when we try to achieve full transparency into the relationship between the energy industry and government regulators.
It’s also a reminder of the value of the free press. How did you and I come to read this article? It was researched and written by a journalist who submitted it to an editor, who eventually was satisfied with it and hit the “publish” button.
As ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright points out in her latest book, “Fascism: A Warning,”America is in a very fragile position at this point. If we move any further towards authoritarianism and accept our president’s assertion that “the free press is the enemy of the people,” echoing the words of Stalin and Mussolini, we will have lost. This whole 244-year long experiment with democracy will be over; it will have been shown to be a failure.
