The Conservation Council of N.C. recognized seven state politicians for environmental work.

For its annual "Green Tie" awards, the Raleigh-based nonprofit honored Attorney General Roy Cooper, state Sen. Ellie Kinnaird and state Reps. Angela Bryant, Ruth Samuelson, Cullie Tarleton, Jennifer Weiss and Paul Luebke.

Cooper was praised for having a team of lawyers fight the Tennessee Valley Authority over air pollution.

Bryant, Samuelson and Tarleton were recognized for their support for a smoking ban and bills on energy efficiency and water conservation.

Weiss and Kinnaird were singled out as representative and senator of the year.

Luebke received the "Defender of the Environment" award, the highest award given this year. 

"At the Legislature, it was a short time ago very few people talked about the need to protect the environment and public health," said board president Nina Szlosberg.

She said business and environmental groups now work together.

Gov. Beverly Perdue will announce an energy reform package.

She will announce a package to refocus state energy policymaking and make strategic investments in environmentally friendly industries at the SAS solar farm in Cary at 9:45 a.m. tomorrow. 

Perdue will be joined by Ivan Urlaub, executive director of the N.C. Sustainable Energy Association; John Sall, co-founder of SAS; and other business and environmental leaders. 

Outer Banks shoppers at large retailers would have the option of paper or nothing under a bill the Senate approved today.

The legislation, which passed 47 to 1, would prohibit those stores from using plastic shopping bags. Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat, is pushing the bill, which applies to Dare, Currituck and Hyde counties. Basnight said the flimsy bags are polluting the landscape of the Outer Banks, which relies on its landscape to attract tourism business.

The bill's chief sponsor, Sen. Josh Stein, a Raleigh Democrat, described the bill as a pilot program that could go statewide. The goal is to encourage shoppers to use reusable bags, such as the cloth totes sold at groceries, and eventually eliminate both paper and plastic bags.

Nearly 20 states have considered or imposed legislation regulating plastic bags, but only the city of San Francisco has banned them.

Retailers argue that paper bags made from recycled material, which are permitted by the bill, cost more and that retrofitting stores that are set up for plastic bags also will create costs that are passed along to customers. The wiser approach, they argue, is to encourage or even mandate recycling.

It's hard to measure a legislator's impact.

From the individual votes to the behind-the-scenes support, a state lawmaker can affect a wide variety of issues at the legislature.

As the General Assembly remembers Sen. Vern Malone, we at Dome took a look at a few of the laws and resolutions he wrote in his four terms:  

EDUCATING MILITARY KIDS: A 2008 bill entered North Carolina into an interstate compact to help military children enroll in school.

ALLOWING SCHOOL PARTNERSHIPS: A 2006 bill allowed school boards to enter into partnerships with developers to build new schools.

CHANGING BOARD OF EDUCATION: A 2009 bill allowed the governor to name another public school employee to the State Board of Education. 

HONORING WENDELL: A 2003 resolution honored the founders of the town of Wendell on its 100th anniversary.

LIMITING NUTRIENT OFFSETS: A 2006 bill limited certain nutrient offset payments required of developers whose projects may affect rivers.

In addition, Malone was the prime sponsor of another 39 bills still pending.

A bill would reduce plastic bag use.

Sen. Josh Stein, a Raleigh Democrat, said he filed the bill because he's concerned about their effects on the environment. 

"I'm driving down the road right now and looking out my window and in the trees and in the gutters and on the fences, everywhere are plastic bags," he said. "I don't want North Carolina's state flower to be the plastic bag, I want it to be the dogwood."

The bill would ban plastic bags at major retailers, with the exception of fresh produce, fresh meat and fresh fish. Smaller retailers could continue to use plastic bags.

Stein said most people would switch to reusable plastic and cloth bags, which can cost as little as a dollar. Others would use recyclable paper bags.

Either would be preferable to plastic, he said. 

"We consume hundreds of millions of these bags every year, and only one to three percent get recycled," he said.

Some recent Senate bills of note:

S.B. 943: Expand Film Credit, Sen. Linda Garrou

S.B. 973: Create Dept. of Military and Veterans Affairs, Sen. Tony Rand 

S.B. 992: Authorize Mayors to Solemnize Marriage, Sen. Don Davis

S.B. 994: Establish State Athletics Commission, Sen. Dan Clodfelter

S.B. 1006: Withholding on Contractors Identified by ITIN, Sen. David Hoyle 

S.B. 1014: Lottery Trust Fund, Sen. Doug Berger

S.B. 1018: Reduce Plastic Bag Use, Sen. Josh Stein

The co-chair of a legislative task force on offshore drilling editorialized against it last year.

In a guest editorial in the Charlotte Observer on Sept. 3, Doug Rader wrote that drilling for oil and natural gas off the coast of North Carolina will not reduce gas prices, jeopardize the state's fishing industry and threaten rare coral wilderness.

"The bottom line is clear: oil drilling off North Carolina's coast is not relevant to gas prices we are likely to experience in the coming decades," he wrote.

Rader was appointed by House Speaker Joe Hackney to co-chair a task force that will spend as much as $100,000 and up to a year looking into offshore drilling.

The chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, he served on a panel for Republican Gov. Jim Martin in 1989-90 which came out against exploratory drilling off the coast.

After the jump, the editorial.

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Speaker Joe Hackney is an unusual pick for cover boy.

The Chapel Hill Democrat, a mustachioed cattle farmer and divorce lawyer, is not as good-looking as Brad Pitt, as charismatic as Will Smith or as omnipresent as Barack Obama.

But Governing magazine is not GQ, Entertainment Weekly or, um, every magazine currently in publication.

It's cover story, "Legislatures in 2009" (see what we mean?), highlights Hackney as a "squeaky clean" reformer who came to power as disgraced former Speaker Jim Black fell from grace.

Still, it says he was not the "consensus choice."

He attributes that to his cleaner-than-thou image. "When you're running for speaker," he says, "that's a help with some people and a hindrance with others." But most members recognized the chance Hackney's reputation offered them to begin rebuilding public trust. He was elected speaker after four caucus ballots.

The article notes that Hackney has grown more business-friendly as his district has shifted away from Chapel Hill and into rural Chatham County, though he remains "perhaps the leading environmentalist" in the House.

It also says he's opened up the legislative process, allowing more time for debate and study and avoiding running roughshod over the Republican minority.

Environmentalists would have some questions for a potential transportation appointee.

Elizabeth Ouzts, director of Environment North Carolina, said that she would want to hear more from state Sen. Clark Jenkins about his views before he took a job as secretary of the state Department of Transportation.

Jenkins is one of several people whose names have been discussed by Raleigh insiders recently, though Gov.-elect Beverly Perdue has not made any announcements.

Ouzts said that as a member of the state Board of Transportation Jenkins was "very vocal" about his frustration with delays on road projects caused by the need for environmental reviews, but she noted that his record as a state senator has been good.

In 2007, the group gave Jenkins an 85 percent rating on its scorecard of pro-environmental votes.

"We would hope that he would continue on that path and make decisions that were going to be good for the environment and the economy," she said.

Ouzts was not familiar with the environmental records of Gene Conti or Lanny Wilson, whose names have also come up.