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VPAP Analysis: General Assembly Committee Assignments = $

For elected officials, getting into office is not the only goal on the agenda. There’s also the issue of getting key committee assignments.  Those assignments are likely to influence how much money they’re able to raise.

More businesses donate more money to members of the House Appropriations Committee and Senate Finance Committee. That’s according to a new analysis from the Virginia Public Access Project, which identified the top 100 business donors and determined which committee members benefited the most from their largesse.

Mark Rozell at George Mason University says it's a simple function of following the money. “No matter what area of public policy we’re talking about, the flow of money of course goes through these critical committees and you can budgetarily kill anything in one of these two committees if you are an opponent.”

Opposing bills is just as important, if not more important, than supporting them. Most of the lobbying that happens in Richmond every year is to kill bills that are unfriendly to business.

Stephen Farnsworth at the University of Mary Washington says big money donors also focus their attention to the Commerce and Labor committees, which regulate industries across Virginia. "Pity the lawmakers who are stuck on the Militia, Police and Public Safety committees," Farnsworth says. "They won’t be getting much money at all.”

Those are the committees that routinely kill gun control legislation. The National Rifle Association doesn’t give as much as Altria or Dominion.

Click here to see the full analysis from the Virginia Public Access Project.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

Michael Pope is an author and journalist who lives in Old Town Alexandria.
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