by James C. Sherlock

It is important that Virginians understand early what the total control of the Virginia Government by Democrats will mean in legislation, whether they support the bills or not.

In pursuit of that effort, the author will post each of the General Assembly Democrats’ priority bills that are pre-filed. The format for each post will use the title of a bill as the title of the post. The text of each article will include the summary of that bill as filed. A link will be provided to the full text of the bill as filed.

This author will make no comments on the individual bills.  

He will note here that campaign finance reform is the one issue that most matters to the integrity of the legislative process. But the General Assembly has proven in the past to be too corrupted by the current system to change it meaningfully.

The photo at the open is of a former Democratic candidate who could not raise enough money the traditional way. 

The corruption at the state level extends down to city and county officials who campaign for office under the same lack of constraints. The Virginia Beach City Council is, for example, owned and operated by commercial development interests that contribute the bulk of campaign donations from all sources.  The result was seen in the scandalous story of the new Atlantic Park.

I expect that 98% of Virginians are unaware that we have no state law that limits campaign contributions. Thus, there is no public pressure to pass one.