Tag: Dick Hall-Sizemore
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An Expensive Failure to Follow the Law
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The refusal of the Youngkin administration to follow the law and Virginia Supreme Court decisions will cost the taxpayers $1.6 million. As reported by the Washington Post, the state has agreed in a court settlement to pay, in addition to $420,000 in attorneys’ fees, $1.2 million to former inmates who were held…
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State Money for Private Schools
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The state of Virginia spends more than $100 million annually for Virginia students to attend private colleges and universities in the state. The program is the Tuition Assistance Grant program, commonly known as TAG, authorized in Sec. 23.1-628 through 23.1-635 of the Code of Virginia. There is no need or merit requirement.…
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Three Major Proposed Constitutional Amendments
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The 2025 General Assembly will be taking up constitutional amendments on three hot button issues—abortion, voting rights of felons, and same-sex marriage. In Virginia, to amend the state constitution, the General Assembly must agree to the proposed amendment twice, with an intervening election for the House of Delegates. If the proposal is…
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Should This College be Closed?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Richard Bland College, in Dinwiddie County just outside the city of Petersburg, is an anomaly among Virginia higher ed institutions. It is the only public residential two-year college in the state. As its formal title, Richard Bland College of William and Mary, indicates, it is affiliated with the College of William and…
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One Way to Get Higher Ed to Cut Expenses
Many participants on this blog will welcome a provision Governor Youngkin included in his proposed budget bill that has received little notice in the press: a cap on college tuition and fees for Virginia students. The provision would impose an absolute cap for FY 2026 and limit increases in succeeding years to 2.5 percent or…
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Does a Hedge Fund Want to Buy This House?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore State Sen. Glenn Sturtevant (R-Chesterfield) plans to reintroduce his bill to prohibit investment firms worth more than $50 million from purchasing homes in Virginia, reports the Virginia Mercury. The bill is a reaction to the perception that investment firms are buying a disproportionate share of houses on the market, particularly houses that…
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Another Reason to Avoid the Virginia Lottery
by Dick Hall-Sizemore One of the top selling points made for approval of the establishment of the Virginia Lottery was that lottery profits would be dedicated to public education in Virginia. That is still the message that the Virginia Lottery peddles. Scroll to the bottom of its website home page, past all the current offerings,…
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A Warning to the Rest of the State
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The editorial page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch today has a blistering critique of outgoing Mayor Levar Stoney. Stoney has spent the last few weeks in office in a “Faring Well” tour touting “the remarkable strides Richmond has made over the past 8 years” under his leadership. There is little doubt that this…
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A Voucher by Any Other Name
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Governor Youngkin has included in his proposed budget $50 million to provide $5,000 “Opportunity Grants” to 10,000 students from low-income families to apply against the cost of attending private schools. While this limited voucher program avoids the primary objection of being a subsidy to rich families who send their kids to private…
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A Nonsensical Proposal
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Governor Youngkin has taken on the car tax again, sorta. Rather than attack it directly, he proposes a Rube Goldberg process for some Virginians to get some relief from the car tax. Here is how it would work: Individual taxpayers with a federal AGI of $50,000 or less would get a refundable…
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Off the Interstate: Virginia Gold
by Dick Hall-Sizemore This solitary place name marker is next to an abandoned gas station in Fauquier County. Unlike other such markers that I have written about, this one is not on a back road; it is along heavily-traveled Rt. 17 between Fredericksburg and Warrenton. This marker is different in another respect: It merits an…
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What Happened to All the Water?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Mountain Lake in Giles County has two claims to fame. First, it was the location at which much of the 1987 hit movie Dirty Dancing was filmed. Second, it is one of only two natural lakes in Virginia. (Lake Drummond in the Dismal Swamp in Chesapeake is the other one.) However, the…
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Caves, Hokie Stone, and Crayons
by Dick Hall-Sizemore This year’s Virginia Geological Field Conference was held in Radford the weekend before Election Day. Like the one I attended last year in the Mt. Rogers area, it was an opportunity to go back in time as well as get a brief respite from the drumbeat of politics. The tenor of this…
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The Changes, They Are Here
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Now that the Presidential election is over, Virginians can do what we always do at this time—start seriously considering the next election. Jason Miyares has taken care of one big unknown; he has announced that he will run for reelection as Attorney General. For those of us who have been around Virginia…
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Surprising Results
by Dick Hall-Sizemore As explained by Todd Truitt in his well-argued article regarding the new school accountability system developed by the Virginia Dept. of Education, the state has posted a listing of how each school would currently score under that system if it were in effect today. (It does not go into effect until next…