Former Gov. Jim Gilmore On The Dominion Energy Merger

9 o'clock. The final hour of Richmond's Morning News with Rich Herrera starts now. Wake up with Rich or play catch up all day. At 933, we break all the rules. This is News Radio WRVA. All right. Text message line still blowing up. Also Facebook, Facebook.com slash news radio, WRVA. A couple more ideas thinking outside the box. to be the next press secretary at the White House. Super Dave, are you ready? Yeah, go. Aunt Esther from Sanford and Son. Oh, that would be awesome. I loved Ann Esther. Lewis Black, Rodney Dangerfield, or George the Animal Steel says David of Midlothian. George the Animal Steel never said much. He would just stand there. Didn't he have a green tongue? Yeah, yeah, he'd stick his tongue out, his green tongue out. That would be great. Stand there and no shirt on. He had the hairy arms, hairy back. And this is completely off the subject. Do you know what he did in real life? He was a teacher. Yeah, and a wrestling coach in high school wrestling coach. In Michigan. And when he retired, he was so loved at that school that the school named the stadium after him. Really? That's amazing. All right. Enough by Tom Fuller. Let's go back and talk with Governor Jim Gilmore. Ambassador Jim Gilmore, our guest here on Thursdays here on News Radio. We just had to read a couple of those text messages. Oh, do I got him? Sir, can you hear me? I'm here. Okay, there you are, sir. Okay. Here. Somebody just said us a text message and said, would you please ask? Governor Gilmore about the news of the Dominion Energy merger with the company out of Florida. And what really should go on as far as how do you review this? How do you know it's right for the state, wrong for the state? What would you look at? Well, you know, Rich, when this got announced, I think nobody knew that this was coming. And my first reaction was, you know, Dominion is very central to the life of Virginia. Not only is it a regulated monopoly, it supplies all the energy and all the electricity. But they're also very central to the public life of Virginia. They donate to everybody. They sponsor everything. So Senator Studevant and Delegate McNamara basically said, well, we think the SEC needs a lot of time to prepare for this and not rush it. Now, the rule is that the SEC has, the State Corporation Commission has until January to approve this merger. And I then issued a release supporting Studevent and McNamara and said that they should have more time. and that the General Assembly ought to be called back into session to give them more time. There are some people that said, no, there's plenty of time. And the governor later on after that, much after that, has weighed in and said, well, I'm just going to file a petition with the Corporation Commission. I want to have a seat at the table. So the Governor Abigail Spanberger says she wants to interact, but we don't know what her position would be. And nor do I really, as far as the ultimate decision.

I served on a number of corporate boards. The directors of the Florida company and of Dominion are going to act in what they think is the best profitable opportunity for the state, excuse me, for Dominion. Now, Let me make very, very briefly the case here. If we're going to have data centers, and I think with proper regulations, that that is going to be necessary for artificial intelligence development, and Virginia seems to be the national capital for it, well, you know, we have to have more power. So Dominion, I think, is going to address that issue, hopefully through the merger. I expect to know more about that this week, and when I talk to you next week, I'll have more information. So what, in the best interest of Virginia, what do we need to have happened? Do we need to make sure that Devinion and the next company becomes just as involved, just as dedicated to the... The Commonwealth of Virginia, do we need to make sure that they understand and they upgrade their transmission lines? Do we make sure that they're going to be able to produce enough energy for not only homeowners, but also the data centers over here, sir, because I keep getting people. And I'll state my opinion. You tell me what you think of it. We've made the commitment in Virginia that we're going to be the data center capital of the world. We've given them a tax break when they have to buy new blades for their servers. They do pay a different tax, but certainly not the regular sales tax and exchange. They've all come running down here to build these massive data centers. We hadn't really regulated where they've gone and they've gone different places. They, in the past, had taken a ton of water now because technology has gotten better. They don't take as much. but they do take a ton of electricity, and they would tax any infrastructure, not just Virginia's. And I look at it, sir, the money they bring into a community through the tax base is phenomenal. It's probably one of the biggest tax generators you can find if you have one coming into your county. But the people that live in those counties aren't happy with where they go. They aren't happy with the fact that the electricity costs seem to keep going up. I just got my Dominion bill. It went up. Where do you stand with all this? How do you make heads or tails of it? Well, first of all, let's recognize where we are here. The nationwide, there is a rebellion against data centers. Right. Everybody, it's not just in Virginia, but even nationwide, communities everywhere are feeling like they're being put upon. That, you look, I bought a house. I've been paying the taxes on it. Now all of a sudden there's data center going to go next door and ruin my property. That's what people are worried about. And I think that's actually legitimate. That is legitimate. Yeah, my hope is that.

that through regulation we can have our KKD2, we can have that a center of power at the same time that we accommodate the interests of citizens. And I'm not blind to the really political rebellion against data centers. So we have to find a way to harmonize those things if we can. And then the spinoff issue is the power, and that goes to the issue of this merger that we've been talking about. Okay, so let me ask you this question. As someone who's been the chief executive officer of this Commonwealth, is that a leadership issue? Is that a at the governor's mansion or at the General Assembly's? portion is that county administrators and county board of supervisors and city mayors I don't want if I if I like you said if I bought a home and I've had it for 30 years and there's a piece of farmland behind me that was open it was beautiful and now they put up this big gigantic data center yeah I'd be upset is that zoning or is that the data centers themselves just not being good neighbors Well, look, it's all regulated through zoning and through the boards of supervisors and town council, to be sure. But the governor, I think, can set a tone with this and can set a state policy that can be influential in terms of trying to resolve this issue. So let's see what Abigail Spanberger does. Again, I have called for more or less an additional time to figure this out. Because this is profound. This is the new economy. It goes to the question of artificial intelligence, which is a international race we must win against the Chinese, which means you have to have data centers, which means you have to have electricity. All of a sudden, this is burst without warning upon regular people out there. They're just trying to protect their interests and protect their communities. So that's the political issue, the thorny one that has to be dealt with. I think taking time on this is a good idea. But at the same time, I mean, I dim dominion is coming forward and saying we're just trying to supply some additional electricity. Well, they're trying to do something that is going to, in effect, put the governance of this issue in Virginia in the hands of a Florida company that's going to have, I think, two-thirds or three-quarters of the power of the combined company. The consideration for that has to be done. We have to look at that. And that's the other part. You said I 100% get it because I'm now going to get beat up on. the text line for bringing this up. But I also think that there's a lot of people that are afraid of AI. They're not really sure what AI is going to be. I don't know what it's going to eventually be, but I do know that Pandora's out of the box. And if the Americans are not leading an AI, the Chinese certainly will. And if the Chinese do it or someone else who does it who's not a good faith actor, I'm afraid even more of what would happen if China controlled the next industrial revolution. It's all very new. AI can do two things primarily, two things fundamentally. Number one, it can make your economy more efficient and people's work more efficient. And that creates economic power. And right now China is really challenging us on economic power. It also has military applications. And in fact, there's a lot of talk about that right now where you have drones operating on their own and military applications.

which are essential. So this has to be dealt with. It has to be dealt with quickly, but the U.S. can't stand back and pretend that it doesn't exist, Rich. Yeah, and again, there's so much going on right now. I mean, so I just brought it up. Now people are yelling, who told you the data centers bring in a ton of money? I want to say, I sat down and I talked to some folks from the last administration about this, that's, I want to say they'll bring in on average about a billion dollars a year in local and local taxes and state taxes. That's a pretty big number, isn't it, sir? It is, and it can be of high value. But at the same time, localities, people that they're living in their communities are not focused on what the tax implications would be because, you know, they don't know that that tax money is going to be spent into their benefit in the first place. So they have a right to protect their own interest, to be sure. 100%. And that's where I, you know, here's what I would love to see. I'd love to see someone become that leader. and come up with a big master plan for these data centers. The folks in Goochland have a really good master plan. They're like, listen, we're not going to tear up all of our farmland. We're not going to put it right next to where we have housing. We're going to find a place that we can put them all. We can have them over there, and we're going to control where they go, and that way there's a nice balance between the tax revenues we generate, the jobs that we generate, and protecting what Goochland's all about. I applaud them. I wish more municipalities would be that forward thinking. Well, as long as you're listeners know that the issues that we're seeing in Gooslin and other places are being replicated nationwide. Yeah, no, 100%. You know, we just have to deal with this new industrial revolution that's going, technological revolution that's going on. You know, now that we talk about this, I've been reading up and going through some history books and doing some research. beginning of the Industrial Revolution. A lot of people, same thing. Oh, I don't want to have any of this. I don't want to have factories. We don't want to have this. It's kind of scary, and people aren't really sure. There's so much information and misinformation out there. I think it's something we have to talk a lot about. Well, we are, and you are. Very good. Well, I appreciate it. Dave, can I ask him one question? Super Dave's telling me to wrap up. I got one. No. Well. Well, I didn't get to Ukraine. Give me your update on Ukraine real quick. Well, look, real quick, what's going on is that the winter is coming now in Ukraine and Russia. It's on its way. So what's going on is the status right now is that when I last talked to your listeners about this, I was very positive Ukraine was winning because they now have started to attack all the energy and military infrastructure inside Russia itself through their drone programs. The Russians continued to follow their same pattern.

We're going to put throw soldiers at this, and now they're going to do something different, Rich. They are concentrating on ballistic missiles and reigning ballistic missiles down on the civilians in Ukraine to break their spirit and make them surrender. That's the same thing the Nazis would do into the British with their V2 rockets. Same thing when they were putting rockets into London and the inability of the British to stop the V2 rockets. By the way, it didn't make Britain surrender to Hitler, did it? No. So it's just a war crime that's going on. But I am worried about this because the Ukrainians don't have the capacity to stop the missiles, which means that civilians and infrastructure, just in regular cities, civilian people are being killed by the Russians. And that's their way of doing war. Trying to break their will. trying to break, this is what's going on just in the last week or 10 days. I think that somehow the Europeans, and frankly I would urge the Americans, to find a way to get anti-missile technology to the Ukrainians. Because once they block the Russians from this new development, this new raining down of missiles, they're going to ultimately survive and win the war. But right now I'm getting a little worried about that. It's really shifted in the last week. And then that's where... Volodymyr Zelensky was here in the United States asking for those licenses to create Patriot missiles there and developing themselves. But it's going to take a while to spin those up. Yeah, but we don't have it anymore because we have spent all this military stuff blasting away at the Iranians in the Middle East to know ultimate political. Oh, I was talking about the license to manufacture them themselves, I think, is what they were at. We were talking about last time he was here in D.C. Yeah, but it takes a long time. Yeah, it takes a while to spend those up. I think they'll get that, but it takes a long time. And meanwhile, the Russians are killing civilians. Absolutely. Sir, thank you very much. I will catch up with you next week. I'm around. Thanks very much. All right, Governor Jim Gilmore. Listen, he just sets me straight on all these things. Tremendous. Thank you so much, Governor Gilmore, for joining us here on News Radio, WRVA. All right, Pearson Signature Dealerships. That Pearson Promise only at Pearson Signature Dealerships. Do they make sure they double the engine and transmission warranty on every new vehicle? They've done it for 50 years. Okay, so what's that mean? That means generations. Like you've looked at going, I can buy a car anywhere. I can go up to D.C. I can go over to the coast. I can go anywhere to buy a car. But I'm going to buy one right here in Richmond. Why? Well, if you last for generations, that means you're doing something right, which means you're taking care of your customers. They see the value, they see the service, and they see that you're people of your words. And that's why they start that Pearson Promise. Listen, again, you can find people who sell you a car anywhere. That's great. But if you're in the market for a new car, and you're looking for people that you know you're going to be able to trust because it's a big deal. It's stressful buying a car. But at Pearson, they make it a little bit easier for you before you even walk in the door because you know that they're going to double the engine and transmission warranty for me. That's worth something it is to you as well. Go online to buy Pearson.com. That's buy Pearson.com to see their entire selection of new previously on vehicles at buy Pearson.com.