"Battered Coal Companies Courted State AGs to Fight Climate Rules"

"Murray Energy Corp. made a $250,000 donation to the Republican Attorneys General Association last year and, in return, the coal mining company’s chief executive got a closed-door meeting with state prosecutors to discuss the Obama administration’s regulation of power plants.

Eleven days later, the attorneys general went to federal court to fight the rules that Murray Energy says could put the coal industry out of business.

The meeting among the crystal chandeliers, plush chaises and carpeted staircases of West Virginia’s Greenbrier resort came during the association’s August 2015 summit attended by more than a dozen energy company representatives. A Murray attorney and the head of a coal advocacy group spoke on a panel about “the dangerous consequences of the Clean Power Plan" and other U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules, according to an agenda and other conference materials.

The documents, obtained under state public records requests by a watchdog group, along with tax filings and political campaign disclosures reviewed by Bloomberg News, show how energy companies, Republican attorneys general and the association dedicated to re-electing them are aligned in a legal attack on President Barack Obama’s signature plan to combat carbon pollution from power plants."

Jennifer A Dlouhy reports for Bloomberg September 7, 2016.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-09-07/battered-coal-comp...