Tom “Smitty” Smith: organizer and lobbyist for the people and the planet
by Vicki Wolf

The current issue is coal-fired power plants. Tom Smith, known as Smitty, is passionately informing Texas legislators, gubernatorial candidates and citizens about the air pollution, global warming gases and costs of the 17 proposed power plants and the cost-effective alternative – clean, renewable energy. Smitty says this is clearly the most important issue of our time. “If we lose this battle to stop 17 coal plants we will cook our planet,” he says. “These plants add the equivalent of 20 million cars to global warming. In an average year Americans buy 17 million new cars.”

Since 1985, Smitty has served as director of Public Citizen, a consumer and environmental group active in issues concerning energy, environment, ethics and campaign finance reform, trade agreements with Mexico and other countries, and urban sprawl. An effective organizer and lobbyist in Texas for 22 years, Smitty helped start and has served on the boards of many environmental and renewable energy organizations including, Texans for Public Justice, Texas Wind Power Coalition, Solar Austin, Clean Water Action, Texas Ratepayers to Save Energy, Blue Skies Alliance in the Dallas area and Campaigns for people. He has received the Thomas Paine award from Campaigns for People, Austin Chronicle’s 2001 Critics’ Choice Award for “Best People’s Lobbyist,” and the U.S. EPA “Environmental Excellence Award.”

Early in his career, Smitty was an anti-hunger advocate and the Houston Food Bank director. It was an experience in the early 1970s as a legal aid in Kingsville, Texas that convinced Smitty that lobbying was a powerful way to make change happen.

“I was representing a family that had lost their food stamps due to sudden illness. The rules said you couldn’t change the amount of food stamps more than once a year even if circumstances change,” Smitty recalls. “We took the case to court and won an injunction. It dragged on to the circuit court of appeals. We contacted a local congressman who held a hearing and put an appropriation rider on a bill that was going through congress, and changed the law in 90 days. I got hooked, and decided it was faster to change the law,” he says.

After 22 years, Smitty’s enthusiasm for lobbying remains strong. “Lobbying is a game, it is a serious game that change peoples lives for the better or worse,” Smitty says. “We are in a position where we carry defense as well as new legislation – it is important to keep special interest from getting special deals or having peoples’ rights taken away,” he adds.

Lobbying in Texas is a study in creative tension, according to Smitty. “Ralph Nader said years ago that politics is a contact sport – you have to hit them often and hard to have a chance to win. Our way is to provide enough tension without breaking the delicate thread of credibility to offer viable proposals that legislators can adopt.”

One of the most important things Smitty says he’s learned as a lobbyist is that if you have a criticism you need to have a solution. Smitty and Public Citizen, with a coalition of other organizations, have been working with citizens to fight dirty coal plants and educate the media on the impact of these plants. The solution they offer is renewable energy. “Since 1994, we have been promoting renewable energy as a primary solution,” Smitty says. He has testified before more than 100 legislative committees and organized coalitions of business people, farmers, ranchers and environmentalists. He has written more than a dozen reports and appeared on hundreds of talk shows talking about renewable energy.

Smitty was instrumental in the adoption of the Texas Renewable Portfolio Standard and getting Senate Bill 20 passed in 2005 that increases the amount of energy produced using renewable sources up to 10 megawatts (MW) by 2015. “Now more than 13,000 MW of potential wind sites are proposed throughout Texas, and a recent study found as much as 500,000 MW of potential wind energy production in the state,” Smitty says.

“The most important thing is never give up,” Smitty says. “Time after time, major battles are won at the last minute when a legislator who has never been helpful before gets converted when citizens pick up the phone or go by their office.”

Smitty says citizens can make a difference. “Befriend legislators, send them materials, keep visiting with groups that are concerned about global warming,” Smitty suggests. “We are very close to a tipping point on this issue in this country,” he says. “A majority of states have taken action, and congress will soon follow. But unless we are careful, the solutions will be too weak to matter.”

Smitty and his partner of five years, Karen Hadden, director of the Sustainable Economic Environmental Development (SEED) Coalition, work together on a variety of issues including fighting the new power plants, reducing mercury emissions and promoting clean energy. They enjoy relaxing at their apartment on Little Bee Creek where the water is too shallow for motor boats but nice for swimming, kayaking and fishing.

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