Tag: Dick Hall-Sizemore
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Continuity in the State Finance Agencies
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The lead story in Tuesday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch was a curious one. Its headline promised great drama, which was not delivered, and it missed the real story. The headline, “Retirements Transform State Finance Agencies,” promises great drama. The primary agencies in the Finance Secretariat are the Department of Accounts (DOA), Department of the…
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The Rest of the Story: Other TJ Amicus Briefs
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Asra Q. Nomani recently posted an article listing several organizations that had filed amicus curiae briefs in the case before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in which the Fairfax County School Board is appealing a district court’s ruling that the new admissions process for the Thomas Jefferson School for Science and…
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Lab Schools: An Experiment Worth Making
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Governments fund the activities upon which they place priority. Budget is policy. A budget bill is chock full of choices and priorities. Analyzing an entire budget bill would be a long and tedious process, but proposed amendments to a budget provide an opportunity to focus on specific policy choices. With that in…
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A Senseless Fight
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Sometimes I shake my head in dismay at the Democrats in the General Assembly. They sometimes seem so eager to score points against Governor Youngkin that they end up shooting themselves in the foot. Current case in point is Budget Amendment No. 9 sent down by the Governor. Rather than summarize it,…
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Let’s Get Out of Here
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that four prisoners escaped from the federal prison complex near Petersburg early Saturday morning. No details were released on how they escaped. Undoubtedly, it is important for federal officials to discover how the prisoners escaped and take steps to tighten security. However, there is another question that is…
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Picking the Wrong Fight
by Dick Hall-Sizemore One of the new Commonwealth’s attorneys in Northern Virginia has gotten into serious trouble. Circuit Court Judge James Plowman, in a highly unusual move, has removed the office of Loudoun County Commonwealth’s attorney Buta Biberaj from the prosecution of a case. In his order, Judge Plowman said that the prosecutor’s office had…
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How Many Pieces Did You Say It Will Take To Build This Plant?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There is more good news for the Commonwealth. As reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Governor Youngkin announced on Wednesday that the Lego Group will invest at least $1 billion to build a new manufacturing facility in Chesterfield County. It would be Lego’s only manufacturing facility in the United States. The company projected…
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The Continuing Transformation of Virginia Politics
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Toscano, David. Bellwether: Virginia’s Political Transformation, 2006-2020. Lanham: Hamilton Books, 2022 In this book, David Toscano, whose prior work was Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives (2021), turns his focus on Virginia. The author is a former Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates (2006-2020) from…
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A History Lesson for the Governor
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In announcing the latest revenue collections (they are high), Governor Youngkin renewed his pitch for tax cuts, commenting, “This report confirms that the time is now to deliver meaningful tax cuts to Virginia families who are getting crushed by five-dollar gas and record-high inflation.” That statement gave me pause. “Record-high inflation”? I…
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A Proposal to Mitigate Gun Violence
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In an interesting development, one of the so-called “progressive” Virginia prosecutors has identified a direct link between someone committing misdemeanor offenses and later committing violent felony offenses. The misdemeanor offenses that are predictors are gun offenses. After tracking violent case histories, Ramin Fatehi, the commonwealth’s attorney for Norfolk, as reported by WAVY…
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How Governor Youngkin Can Become the Most Popular Governor in History
Memo To: Governor Glenn Youngkin From: Dick Hall-Sizemore Here is a sure fire way to become the most popular Governor of Virginia in history. It is two-pronged: Order all state agencies to eliminate the use of automated phone trees. The citizens of Virginia deserve to be able to talk to a real person when they…
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Commonwealth Set for Major Broadband Expansion
by Dick Hall-Sizemore One of the issues underlined by the pandemic was the need for all areas of the state to have access to broadband internet. Without access to broadband, kids (and adults) in rural areas cannot take advantage of courses offered online. To the extent that more people will be working remotely, rural areas…
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The Inner Circle Shrinks
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In recent years, 13 or 14 Virginia delegates and senators have held extraordinary power and have been the envy of their colleagues. (The total number and the size of the delegation from each house varied over the years.) They were the conferees on the budget bill and they had the power to…
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“Frequent Flyers” Are Not Harbingers of Anarchy
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In a recent article on this blog, Jim Bacon cited the case of Ronald Thomas as a possible harbinger of a “descent into anarchy.” One commenter cited 13 prior charges, many of which were “nol prossed”. Just looking at a list of charges and their results can be misleading. It is necessary…