Author: Steve Haner
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A Slippery Slope Down to Dark Backroom Deals
by Chris Braunlich Unless Virginia voters reject the constitutional amendment on the ballot April 21, gerrymandering will return to Virginia. Five years ago, 66% of Virginia voters — 2.8 million Virginians — approved a bipartisan redistricting constitutional amendment ending gerrymandering. The result was a map that is widely regarded as one of the fairest in…
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Public Union Bills Causing Angst Among Local Democratic Officials
by Steve Haner Legislation to expand the potential for union contracts to cover most local and state employees is on the verge of approval if Democrats in the House of Delegates and Senate can reconcile two versions of the bill. They might also have to reconcile with locally elected Democratic officials. Many of them have…
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The $4 to $5 Billion in Tax Hikes the Assembly is Approving
by Steve Haner The tax increase proposals still pending at the 2026 General Assembly will extract another $4 to $5 billion annually from Virginians if enacted, shared between the state and the local governments. The Democrats in political control have taken a bow for producing competing budget proposals that are not dependent on major…
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Extended Teacher Leave Entitlement Could Hit Schools Hard
by Derrick A. Max The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran my guest column this morning that warns of the significant learning loss that will likely occur from the Paid Family and Medical Leave bill (SB2) that is quickly winding its way to the Governor’s desk for her promised signature. As I have written previously, the Virginia General Assembly is…
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Expanded PIPP Pulls $360 Million from Power Bill Piggy Bank
by Steve Haner The expansion of an existing state electricity-bill subsidy program under legislation pending at the 2026 General Assembly could add up to $360 million to the annual cost during its first full year of implementation. The Department of Planning and Budget (DPB) has produced a detailed fiscal impact analysis for House Bill 884,…
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Cost of Undergrounding Program is Mostly Profit to Lenders, Stockholders
by Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia’s ongoing program to place selected neighborhood service lines underground, spreading the bill for the upgrades onto all its 2.7 million customers, will cost another $3.8 billion if the General Assembly blesses its extension for another ten years. Of that, about $1.6 billion is the cost of the construction work…
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The Data Center Scapegoat Led to Two Different Sacrificial Altars
by Steve Haner Virginia’s world-leading data center industry, once a source of economic pride to our Commonwealth, has become the scapegoat of the 2026 General Assembly. The State Senate and House of Delegates have built different altars for its sacrifice. The Senate is about to vote to strip away the major sales and use tax…
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The General Assembly’s 22.5% “Labor Tax” Gamble
by Derrick A. Max As the Virginia General Assembly enters the final weeks of its 2026 session, a wave of new labor mandates is about to reach the Governor’s desk, two of which she has promised to sign, and one she seems inclined to support as well. House Bill 5 (Paid Sick Leave), Senate Bill 2 (Paid Family…
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Neither House nor Senate Budget Raises General Taxes
But the Senate Strips the Data Center Tax Break Next Year by Steve Haner The Senate and House of Delegates financial committees met on Sunday to approve competing sets of amendments to the next Virginia budget, neither proposing any general tax increases. The Senate version included modest tax reform: a small taxpayer rebate for this…
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Tariff Ruling Correct, Good for Virginia
by Derrick A. Max The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources v. Trump is a landmark reaffirmation of one of the Constitution’s most fundamental principles: the power to tax belongs to Congress alone. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly vests in the legislative branch the authority “to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” Tariffs…
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No, RTD, That Bill Does Not Cut Future Electric Rates
by Steve Haner The nonsense that the General Assembly is passing a bill to shift huge energy costs onto data centers and off all the other utility customers is going to be a bipartisan meme. A bill that merely punts that issue to the regulatory State Corporation Commission passed on a unanimous State Senate vote. …
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They Think Your Electric Bill is Just a Piggy Bank to Raid
by Steve Haner Key energy legislation poised to pass the 2026 General Assembly will increase your future electricity bills, not lower them. The bills will worsen price increases already caused by the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which passed the last time Virginia was under one-party control. As the Assembly crosses its first deadline, with…
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Don’t Mess With Texas Natural Gas
Natural gas kept the lights on in Texas during the coldest days of this past January, just the way it did in Virginia.The popular Democratic nonsense narrative that Texas is achieving energy nirvana with all its solar and wind and battery assets should just be disregarded. You can see above what was working during the…
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SCC Rejects Effort to Reverse Its Gas Plant Approval
by Steve Haner The Virginia State Corporation Commission has rejected a petition for reconsideration pushed by opponents of Dominion Energy’s planned Chesterfield natural gas generators. The environmental activist groups could now appeal the SCC’s approval of the plant to the Virginia Supreme Court. The SCC is a court, after all, so its decisions can be…
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Big Batteries Lose Big Energy Every Charging Cycle
by Steve Haner An inconvenient truth of utility-scale battery operations is that they take in more power than they later put out. From an energy grid operations point of view they are considered “net load” and certainly not a generation asset. In a previous post about the battery mandate legislation now poised for passage in…