Sens. Kenneth Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, and Thomas Norment Jr., R-James City, have been cleared of conflict-of-interest charges by the Senate Ethics Advisory Panel.
David Nixon, a Roanoke lawyer and Republican activist had filed a complaint noting that the two prominent lawmakers were employed by Kaufman and Canoles, the leading law firm in Hampton Roads, which represents a number of clients that acquire land through eminent domain. The involvement of Stolle and Norment in shaping eminent domain legislation, Nixon charged, amounted to a conflict of interest.
The panel disagreed — unanimously. Reports Christina Nuckols with the Virginian-Pilot:
“This was a frivolous action that was calculated to try to prevent two senior legislators from voting on an important issue,” Stolle said. Stolle and Norment abstained earlier this year when the Senate voted on eminent domain bills. Stolle said he is not sure that those abstentions affected the final outcome of the legislation.
Nixon’s argument was long on suggestion but short on specifics. (See my previous post, “The Case Against Norment: Suggestive but Not Yet Persuasive.”) The evidence of a conflict of interest did not seem compelling to me when I wrote, and it obviously didn’t seem compelling to the panelists who cleared Norment and Stolle.
However, Nixon probed into relationships that are well worth highlighting. Norment, who has carried water for Dominion on matters of electric deregulation and reregulation, has significant holdings of Dominion stock (valued between $50,000 and $250,000, according to the Virginia Public Access Project), and accepted a Dominion invitation to go on a hunting trip in 2001. Furthermore, according to VPAP, he has received $11,800 in campaign contributions from Dominion during the current reporting cycle.
It seems undeniable that Norment is cozy with Virginia’s biggest power company, and also that he was one of the company’s most dependable allies while Dominion was steering legislation potentially worth billions of dollars through the General Assembly. There’s nothing illegal or unethical about his connections, but they are something that voters might want to bear in mind when they consider whom they want representing them.