CHARLESTON, WV – Governor Patrick Morrisey introduced Todd Johnston as West Virginia’s Energy, Infrastructure, and Competitiveness Director.

At a press conference held at the Governor’s Office, Morrisey said this position will work with the Secretaries and staff of Commerce, Environmental Protection, Transportation, and Economic Development to develop a strategic vision for making West Virginia more attractive to businesses.

Highlights from Governor Morrisey’s remarks today: “We know that for West Virginia to unleash its true potential, we have to be an energy powerhouse, and that means taking advantage of all of our energy resources…

“Every single day that I wake up, and every day that our whole cabinet wakes up, we’re focusing on how we can defeat all the states that we touch economically, and it’s a good friendly competition…

“We have a wonderfully talented individual who’s going to serve as the director of this energy, infrastructure and competitiveness effort, and his name is Todd Johnston. Todd’s going to be focusing on all the different ways we can grow economically, and he’s going to be helming an effort with our Secretary of DEP, with our transportation secretary, with our commerce and our economic development staff in order to make sure that we’re fixing the fundamentals so that we can grow…

“The goal of this effort is to identify things, number one, that we can fix directly, that we uniquely control, but also to build on the partnership that we’re going to have with the Trump administration. Because they’re looking for different ways to be very aggressive on reducing regulations and red tape.”

Morrisey also announced he’d be convening a CEO Summit soon to open a productive dialogue with the private sector to stimulate economic growth further.

Todd Johnston is a public policy professional with extensive experience working on energy, natural resource, and infrastructure issues. This includes more than a decade in federal and state government where he served in leadership positions on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and as a policy and regulatory adviser at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Todd also has worked with the mining and cement industries on policy and regulatory compliance matters. Todd has a political science degree from Hampden-Sydney College.