Tag: Dick Hall-Sizemore
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Damn the Constitution! Full Speed Ahead!
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Leaving aside the issue of whether masks should be required in schools, there is a larger issue in question in this legislative fight over masks. The plan now seems to be that each house will pass Sen. Petersen’s substitute for SB 739, which would prohibit any school district from requiring students to…
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Move On, Can’t Have Divisiveness Over Schools
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Here is a comment by a politician that would fit very well in the comments in BR over the last year or so and is in full accord with Governor Youngkin’s effort to “root out” divisive concepts in schools: “Nothing in my lifetime, and I doubt at any other time in the…
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More Than You Ever Wanted To Know About the Regulatory Process in Virginia
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There has been a fair amount of general discussion on this blog lately about promulgating or repealing regulations in Virginia. As a recent post of Steve Haner indicates, the regulatory process also figures prominently in bills being introduced in the current General Assembly. To help inform this and future discussions, the following…
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Welcome to Reality, Governor!
by Dick Hall-Sizemore As reported in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, Senate Democrats are pretty much making mincemeat of Governor Youngkin’s Day One agenda. The Governor’s reaction? “I’m disappointed at the partisan politics that I see being played in the Senate.” What? Did he actually expect the Democrats to roll over and go along with his proposals…
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Warning: These Comments May be Divisive
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Rather than allowing teachers to expose students to ideas that challenge long-held beliefs and perhaps teaching those students to think critically, Governor Youngkin would prohibit teachers from raising ideas that make some people uncomfortable. When he first directed the Superintendent of Public Instruction to delete departmental policies and guidance to local school…
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The Games Have Begun
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Senate Democrats are up in arms over Governor Youngkin’s nomination of Andrew Wheeler as Secretary of Natural Resources. Today, The Washington Post reports that Republicans have upped the stakes. It seems that a member of the State Corporation Commission is up for election. Angela Navarro was elected by the Democratically controlled 2021…
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Et Tu, Brute?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The backers of Glenn Youngkin on this blog have got to be feeling confused, at least, if not downright betrayed. Youngkin promised to expand the number of charter schools in the Commonwealth. They cheered. Now, he has revealed his plan for charter schools. As reported today by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Governor has…
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Showdown at the GA Corral
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares recently announced on the nationally televised Laura Ingraham show that “there’s a new sheriff in town.” That new sheriff was gunned down Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The issue was Miyares’s marquee proposal to broaden the Attorney General’s authority to prosecute criminal cases in circuit court.…
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Youngkin The Deficit Budgeteer
by Dick Hall-Sizemore As reported on this blog earlier by Steve Haner, Governor Youngkin has proposed new tax cuts totaling approximately $3.0 billion for the biennium. But the governor was not content with tax cuts. He also wants to spend more. His proposed amendments to the budget introduced by Governor Northam include more than half…
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Report From the School Mask Mandate Battlefield
by Dick Hall-Sizemore My grandkids have been homeschooled since they were old enough to go to school (going on 16 years or so now). Therefore, I don’t have a dog in this fight over school mask mandates. Neither do most of the commenters on this blog, I suspect. Thus, a recent conversation with a friend…
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The Battle of the Eye Doctors
by Dick Hall-Sizemore One of the constants over the many years that I have been around or following the Virginia General Assembly has been the fight between optometrists and ophthalmologists. The legislative battles between these two groups provide a good lesson in two aspects of the legislative process: the politics of regulation of professions and…
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SNOW DAY!
by Dick Hall-Sizemore What is it with school divisions? I am not talking about masks or anything about COVID, but about their panic at the mere mention of snow. This has been a longtime complaint of mine. The Wednesday afternoon weather forecast for the Richmond area on Thursday called for temperatures in the high 30s…
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Hands Off My Donations!
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Virginia Senators wasted little time killing off an attempt to limit campaign contributions. On its first day of meetings, the Privileges and Elections Committee took up Senator Chap Petersen’s bill to place a $2o,000 cap on campaign contributions (SB 44). Voting to report the bill were five Democrats: Deeds (Bath), Ebbin (Alexandria),…
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The Speaker’s Committee Assignments, With a Surprise
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Probably the single most important factor contributing to the power of the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates is the authority, under the Rules of the House, to assign members to committees. The committees to which a member is assigned can often determine the degree of influence he wields in the…
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Day One
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Comments and ruminations on “Day One” actions: Executive Order 1—”Inherently divisive” concepts. The headlines will have gotten this one wrong. The Governor has not prohibited the teaching of critical race theory in public schools, not that anyone was actually doing that. He has directed the Superintendent of Public Instruction to purge the…