Meet the Wealthy Green Foundation Behind Governor Brown’s Global Climate Action Summit
Energy In Depth: Climate & Environment cited CEI’s Senior Fellow Christopher Horner on “Government for Rent”.
A new report entitled, “Government for Rent: Exposing Climate Politics in Governors’ Offices,” found California Governor Jerry Brown’s Global Climate Action Summit is part of a disturbing trend where politicians are using their offices to promote activist donors’ climate agenda in exchange for free internal staffing and PR support. The report, authored by Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is based on internal documents obtained through various states’ open records laws, which were published alongside the report.
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To execute this strategy, the Hewlett Foundation hired former State Department Special Envoy for Climate Change, Johnathan Pershing, who was given a sizable budget “to place climate and energy policy staff members in governors’ offices, where they would be running the money and at least in one instance the hiring process through the World Resources institute.” Chris Horner, the report’s author, explains how this is essentially “government for rent”:
“This practice represents having outside parties hire staff members selected by governors for whom their legislatures have not authorized or have not appropriated funds. They use their office in service of the donors and of the advocacy groups’ and politicians’ aligned agenda.”