2006 Conservation Scorecard

By reading this Scorecard, you’ve taken an important step toward protecting Virginia’s environment.  Knowing how your legislators vote on key bills is a key step toward holding them accountable and making conservation a top priority in Virginia government.  Our annual Conservation Scorecard records the most important conservation votes of each legislative year and is distributed to VALCV members, Virginia environmental organizations, elected officials at every level, and the news media.  Now in its seventh year, the Conservation Scorecard has become the authoritative source on Virginia’s environmental politics.

As a legislative watchdog, VALCV tracks the voting records on key environmental, growth and funding proposals in the General Assembly.  During each session we work hard to make sure legislators hear loud and clear from the conservation voters in their districts.  Then at the session’s end we publish this Virginia Conservation Scorecard to help voters distinguish between the rhetoric and the reality of a lawmaker’s record.

VALCV is an advocate for a wide spectrum of conservation initiatives while opposing ill-conceived legislation that takes Virginia’s environmental protection backward.  We create this annual Conservation Scorecard to illustrate the performance of our elected officials during the legislative session on bills that have an impact on conservation issues.  Experts from Virginia’s conservation organizations make recommendations to VALCV on which votes should be included.  If a vote does not illustrate a clear distinction between those who support the conservation position and those who do not, often that vote is discarded as a Scorecard vote.  This is a natural limitation of a Scorecard that is particularly visible in a year when there are so few significant conservation initiatives.

This year’s Scorecard, in addition to providing scores for 2006 and 2005, also includes a cumulative score for each legislator.  This cumulative is a calculation of the actual number of “right” votes cast by legislators since VALCV began the Scorecard in 2000. We calculate cumulative scores by dividing the number of “right” votes by the total number of possible votes that legislator has been able to cast during his or her legislative career.  This careful process allows the Conservation Scorecard to give a clear picture of a legislator’s long-term performance on conservation priorities.

Remember that we must not permanently chastise legislators for their poor performance—we believe in “conservation salvation.”  Every legislator has room for improvement and we should be supportive, encouraging them each session.  And we must also not take legislators’ good performance for granted—they still need to hear this message from conservation-minded constituents.

Want to check out the entire Scorecard? Go back to the Main Page to download it.