But liabilities still exceed assets by 17 percent.
Earlier this week, we discussed how deferred maintenance represents a form of hidden deficit spending. Underfunding pension contributions is another classic gambit of state government. Since bottoming out in the mid-2010s, the Virginia Retirement System has been inching closer each year toward full funding for teachers and state employees, according to this graph published by the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission in its 2025 VRS Oversight Report.
Eighty percent funding is often cited as a benchmark for a healthy pension system.
In a unanimous vote Friday, the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors selected Scott C. Beardsley, dean of the UVA Darden School of Business, as the University’s 10th president. https://t.co/5v785i9rPBpic.twitter.com/Fhugl4ORq8
I figured the University of Virginia’s presidential selection would appoint someone from within the University because who in their right mind would move across the country to Charlottesville knowing the kind of reception he or she would get from Virginia politicians:
From Secretary of Commerce Juan Pablo ‘s December newsletter:
Over the last year, we’ve announced 156 billion dollars in net new capital investment across the Commonwealth. That growth is broad-based. We currently have 220,000 open jobs, with 85,000 more on the way, plus another 40,000 construction jobs. Because of this opportunity, real wages in Virginia have increased by more than 10 percent over the past year. The national average is just 4.2 percent. That means real wages in Virginia are growing at more than twice the national rate.
Real wages are a critical metric of economic wellbeing. If the 10-percent-increase-in-real-wages figure stands up to scrutiny, that’s an extraordinary accomplishment for Virginia. But does it stand up to scrutiny? Perhaps someone in our desiccated husk of a press corps could look into it.
Update from Austin Stevens in the Governor’s Office:
The Secretary’s newsletter was citing data from Virginia Works, which highlighted July 2024 to July 2025 data from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) report for BLS. You can see the wage growth highlighted for total private was 9.42%, which was rounded up to 10%. In the newsletter, we walked people through the nominal increase while highlighting the national/CPI data to end up getting to real wages.
Virginia ranks 23rd highest among states for violent firearm offenses, with 88 per 100,000 residents annually on average (slightly below the 50-state average of 93). Virginia’s statewide gun homicide rate was 5.4 per 100,000 people, which was 21st highest among the states and equal to the national average.
In related matters… JLARC has access to Virginia’s 2024 homicide numbers. Why hasn’t the Virginia State Police published its 2024 Crime in Virginia report yet?
Fairfax County Public School leaders capitulated after a student challenged their pro-transgender policies in court, offering hope that the era of so-called “transgender rights” is coming to a close.
by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora Republished with permission from IWFeatures
Last month, Fairfax County Public Schools, represented by Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, extended a Rule 68 Offer of Judgment to a former student, identified as “Jane Doe,” over its bathrooms and pronouns policies. Virginia’s largest public school district granted the plaintiff $50 and attorney’s fees associated with the case.
Jane Doe, represented by America First Legal, filed the lawsuit asserting that the district violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, Title IX, and the Virginia Constitution by prioritizing “gender identity” over biological sex and religious conscience. The plaintiff had encountered a boy in the girls’ bathroom while at school, which school policy permits. The district’s code of conduct stipulates bathroom and locker room use is based on “gender identity” rather than biological sex. It also mandates preferred pronoun usage.
In response to the district’s decision not to fight the case, Jane Doe’s mother told IW Features, “My sincere thanks goes to my daughter’s legal team at America First Legal, who were the only adults during this whole ordeal to listen to my pleas for help to keep my daughter safe while she was at school.”
Governor Glenn Youngkin (R), trying to cut taxes to the end.
Governor Glenn Youngkin has proposed that Virginia conform its tax rules to most of the changes in federal taxes adopted by Congress last summer, including recognizing a state tax deduction for tip income, overtime pay and interest payments on car loans.
Those tax policy recommendations are part of the Republican’s final introduced state budget package, which he presented to legislators on Wednesday at a joint meeting of the House and Senate financial committees. Their fate will be decided early next year by the legislators and incoming Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger.
The departing Governor also proposed to make other tax cuts he enacted during his term permanent, including the state’s current standard deduction amount of $8,750 per person or $17,500 per couple and the higher Earned Income Tax Credit. Without legislative action the standard deduction would revert in 2027 to $6,000 per couple, which was the allowed deduction at the start of his term. The higher deduction saves a married couple up to $661 per year, so losing it would hurt.
“There is no need for any new taxes and there is no need for tax increases,” Youngkin told the assembled legislators and Spanberger, who was watching in the front row. He included in that admonition the carbon tax on electricity imposed by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which he ended but which Spanberger has pledged to reimpose, reaping half a billion dollars per year from energy customers.
Youngkin is proposing only partial compliance with the new federal deductions for tips and overtime income, and the car loan interest. Deductions would not be available this current year, unlike the federal deductions. Starting with tax year 2026, a taxpayer who qualified for those deductions at the federal level could take 25% of that amount off on their state tax return, and in subsequent years it rises to 50% of the federal amount.
An insidious form of deficit spending is deferred maintenance. Could that be a problem in Virginia? The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission took a look at state-owned buildings, valued at between $31 billion to $47 billion.
The M-R FIX [database] shows that about half of state-owned buildings are almost 50 years old or older, and about one-third of the systems (e.g., HVAC, roofing, plumbing, etc.) in state buildings are past their expected lifespans (i.e., expired), according to generic lifespan metrics. … M-R FIX does not include data on actual building condition. …
The state does not currently have an estimate for the total cost of addressing needed maintenance at state-owned buildings. However, data collected by JLARC staff from 12 agencies/HEIs with the majority of state-owned building square footage indicates that current maintenance reserve project needs exceed $1.1 billion.
🚨 UVA’s Presidential Search Just Hit the Death Threats Stage
On Friday, UVA’s Faculty Senate discussed reports that members of the presidential search committee are receiving death threats. Multiple senators said they believed the reports were credible based on Board of… pic.twitter.com/2K7Dc0fUFz
Politicians and other public figures — now including members of university presidential search committees, apparently — have learned in recent months to take death threats seriously. Many people fantasize about seeing them dead. Here in Virginia, there was Jay Jones, who has been elected Attorney General. And now…
Update: The full name of the woman who said that she'd poison "white MAGA families" if she owned a Soul Food place and they came to eat there is Katia Gardner, and she is the daughter of Virginia House of Delegates member Debra Gardner (@Gardner4Del). https://t.co/GN5NXQ2ACxpic.twitter.com/2vmHC0ZRcy
The Virginia Education Association (VEA), the state arm of the National Education Association, has no interest in educating your children. Instead, they want to push “advocacy and activism for educators”—a goal they stated explicitly and repeatedly throughout their November 2025 conference. The VEA indoctrinates educators whose public-school classrooms become incubators—creating future Democrat voters.
During the VEA’s Education Professionals in Collaboration Conference in November, the session topics and speakers focused on far-left social justice talking points, and virtually nothing about improving educational opportunities for Virginia’s kids.
The VEA’s event keynote speaker was non-binary author George M. Johnson whose book, All Boys Aren’t Blue, is found in schools across the nation. Leftists decry the removal of Johnson’s book from school library shelves despite its X-rated content. Excerpts include passages such as, “He reached his hand down and pulled out my d***. He quickly went to giving me ****. I just sat back and enjoyed it as I could tell he was too.” The book is filled with vile sexually explicit content that the VEA celebrates and pushes onto children.
The VEA claims it’s “book banning” if anyone opposes pushing this sexual propaganda onto minors. In fact, they recently promoted Johnson’s book as a way to “fight against censorship in our schools.”
Johnson’s controversial activism doesn’t end with the sexualization of children. He also instructs that America is systemically racist.
Any discerning observer paying attention to the ongoing barrage of unprecedented attacks on the University of Virginia Board of Visitors (BOV) and its leadership cannot help but notice a striking similar pattern. The same allegations—largely manufactured, repetitious, and thinly sourced—are recycled again and again, apparently in the belief that if a proverbial “big lie” is repeated often enough and echoed by multiple voices, it will eventually be accepted as fact. This naturally raises two questions: Where is this campaign coming from, and why are its participants acting with such unusual aggression and hostility?
A closer look at developments in Charlottesville, coupled with information from knowledgeable inside sources, provides the answer. There is little doubt that these attacks are part of a highly coordinated and well-financed effort. This effort appears to be led by both friends and supporters of former president Jim Ryan and former UVA officials, further joined by Democrat members of the Virginia Senate, the Spanberger political team, certain members of the faculty and administration, and several student organizations (all collectively referred to hereafter as the “Cabal”). Much of this activity appears to be synchronized and amplified by a professional public relations firm.
Why are they doing this? The immediate objective is clearly to intimidate and delegitimize the BOV during the current search for a new university president. The broader objective, however, is plainly political: to prevent the selection of any president who might depart from the highly politicized progressive agenda that has dominated the University Grounds for roughly the past fifteen years.
The Richmond City Council voted 7-1 to approve the creation of a FOIA Library on the city website.
There was debate until the end over whether the pro-transparency measure goes far enough or leaves the govt too much control over what the public seeshttps://t.co/SHePSvrP5T
The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….
This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.
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