By Ty Bowers

Sen. William C. Wampler Jr., R-Bristol, last year took two hunting trips at a cost of $4,077.27.

The senator, however, didn’t pay for them. The Old Dominion Road Contractors, a lobbying group, picked up the tab for one trip. And Dominion Resources foot the bill for the other.

Wampler, who lives 325 miles from Richmond, also received other big gifts: plane trips worth $3,537.50 from the CLECO Corp., RAPOCA Energy, Pittson Coal Co., the Coalfield Economic Development Authority and Medicaid Facilities of America.

Throw in some smaller presents from Philip Morris, American Electric Power and the Wellmont Foundation, and Wampler accepted a total of $7,961.55 in gifts in the year 2000.

That was more than any other member of the General Assembly, according to an analysis by VCU’s Legislative Reporting class.

Wampler was unavailable to comment on the gifts, said his secretary, Patricia Stansbury.

The senator represents a coal-mining region of southwestern Virginia. His district includes Dickenson, Wise, Lee and Scott counties as well as his home city of Bristol – areas that border West Virginia and Tennessee.

Wampler, who received a campaign contribution of $1,000 from the Virginia Coal Association in 1999, offered a bill last year to extend tax breaks for coal companies in an attempt to preserve mining jobs, according to news reports.

Coal production in Virginia has been on the decline since 1990, and mining jobs have been cut in half in the same time frame. The General Assembly approved a similar tax break five years ago to curb the job losses.

Wampler, who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce and Labor and serves on the Senate Finance Committee, this session sponsored legislation that would affect localities levying coal and gas severance taxes against utilities and energy manufacturers.

The measure, which the Senate approved unanimously last month, would affect all localities that impose the coal and gas severance tax, according to the state Department of Taxation.

Though the provision would have no impact on state revenues, according to the department, it would most directly affect utilities and energy providers who might seek to challenge the validity of local ordinances that impose the tax.

Current law allows localities to tax energy providers up to a rate of 3 percent. The department indicates in its analysis that some localities’ severance taxes fail to meet the provisions of the state statute.

Wampler’s measure would allow localities to withstand any challenge by engery providers against the legality of their taxes as long as they can demonstrate that they are in "substantial compliance with the law." The department further indicates that the meaning of "substantial compliance" remains unclear.

The severance tax generated $5.1 million in revenues in 1999 for the counties that employed it. Currently Buchanan, Dickensen, Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell and Wise counties are the only areas that assess the severance tax.

On his Statement of Economic Interests, Wampler did not give any details about the hunting trips provided by the road contractors or Dominion Resources. Legislators have asserted that such trips do not influence decision making at the Capitol.

For example, Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, last year went on hunting trips worth $7,268 – courtesy of the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association, Dominion Resources and Brown & Root. (Brown & Root is a unit of Halliburton Co., for which Dick Cheney worked before becoming vice president. Brown & Root has proposed building the Coalfields Expressway through Southwest Virginia.) The hunts were in Canada, Georgia and Texas.

Stolle has maintained that legislative business is never discussed on such trips.