Category Archives: General Assembly

There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills!

Posted on January 11, 2024 by | 134 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

As staff members of the General Assembly start looking to “find” money in Gov. Youngkin’s proposed budget bill that can be used to fund priorities of their committee members (and they will be looking—that is a major part of their jobs during the Session), a good place to look would be capital maintenance reserve. There is at least $200 million in that budget item that could be taken without adversely affecting any of the agencies involved.

As defined by the Dept. of Planning and Budget (DPB) in its reporting instructions to agencies, a maintenance reserve (MR) project is “a major repair or replacement to plant, property, or equipment that is intended to extend its useful life.” A typical MR project would be repair or replacement of built-in equipment such as in HVAC systems; repair or replacement of building or plant components such as roofs or windows; and repair of existing utility systems such as steam lines or water systems.

The cost for an MR project must exceed $25,000 but be no more than $2.0 million for a non-roof replacement project and no more than $4.0 million for a roof replacement. DPB may grant exceptions to these dollar amounts and agencies must submit annual reports to DPB on MR expenditures. Continue reading →

134 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Government Finance, Uncategorized

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As Dominion and APCO $oar, NOVEC Drops Rates

Posted on January 10, 2024 by | 80 comments

Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative’s territory within the greater Northern Virginia region.

By Steve Haner

The major “rural” electric cooperative serving very urban Northern Virginia is drastically lowering its rates as of this month, because the cost it is paying for bulk power purchases has dropped. The contrast with what is happening with Virginia’s two major investor-owned electric companies may be telling Virginia something if anybody wants to listen.

NOVEC, or Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative, will be charging its residential users just under $114 for each 1,000 kilowatt hours of usage, down more than $26. The commercial and industrial users among its 175,000 customers are seeing comparable reductions. Continue reading →

80 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Energy, General Assembly, Regulations and Government Oversight, Utilities

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How Not To Do Tax Reform. Again.

Posted on January 8, 2024 by | 34 comments

By Steve Haner

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Governor Glenn Youngkin’s administration had its first formal discussion with Virginia’s local governments about eliminating their car tax collections two days after he announced it publicly.

The General Assembly convenes Wednesday and if there is a plan to replace the $2.8 billion in local government revenue raised by that tax source, it has not surfaced. Voters truly detest the local levy, mainly because it is one of the few taxes everybody pays by check or with a credit card, but at this point it is safe to assume the idea is dead in the water. Continue reading →

34 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, General Assembly, Taxes

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Rent Control Bill Introduced in Virginia

Posted on January 8, 2024 by | 7 comments

by Hans Bader

A just-introduced Virginia bill, HB 192, would limit rent increases to “one percent over the Consumer Price Index” in places where the rental vacancy rate is “less than 10 percent,” if the “Consumer Price Index … is greater than five percent.” Virginia has a rental vacancy rate of about 4%, well below 10%, so effectively, this would be a statewide rent control law.

The bill does not allow larger rent increases even to pay for things like major capital improvements.

The bill, introduced by Democratic Del. Marty Martinez, is called the “Landlord and Tenant Fairness Act.”  It contains this rent-control provision:

C. If the rental vacancy rate for a locality is less than 10 percent during the previous calendar year and the Consumer Price Index as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor is greater than five percent, any rent increase imposed by a landlord shall be no greater than one percent over the Consumer Price Index.

Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, General Assembly, Housing, Regulations and Government Oversight

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Not Every Teacher’s Salary Can Be Above Average

Posted on January 5, 2024 by | 13 comments

by Hans Bader

In the mythical Lake Wobegon, all the children are above average. But in real life, half of all people have to be below average, by definition. Half of all people are paid below average, especially in counties with very low living costs, where the vast majority of people are paid below the national average.

Still, no teachers union likes its members to be paid below average, even when they live in areas where the cost of living is below the national average, like Richmond, Amherst, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Harrisonburg, Staunton, or Waynesboro.

Nadarius Clark, a Democratic Virginia delegate, has introduced House Bill 187, which would require Virginia teachers to be paid at or above the national average for teachers. The bill “requires that public school teachers be compensated at a rate that is at or above the national average teacher salary…. ” The bill also requires that public school instructional and non-instructional support staff be compensated at a rate that is “at or above the national average salary for such staff.”

It is a bad idea for states to pass such laws. If every state passed such a law, teacher pay would be higher than for any other profession, and increase toward infinity, because states would be constantly increasing their teachers’ pay relative to other states so as not to be below the national average, and yet, many states would never reach the national average, due to other states increasing teacher pay first. (By definition, half of all states are going to be below average.) Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), General Assembly

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Let’s Make a Deal

Posted on December 18, 2023 by | 17 comments

Sen. Louis Lucas (D-Portsmouth)

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Gov. Glenn Youngkin earned his spurs (and his money) making deals in the private sector. He came into the governorship with no political experience. During his first two years in office, he showed little inclination to compromise or make deals. He bet big this fall on coming out of the November elections with Republican majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. He lost, big time.

Now there is something that he wants; something that would be a feather in his cap: engineering the move of two major-league sports teams, the NBA Washington Wizards and the NHL Washington Caps, to Virginia.

His major obstacle is a General Assembly controlled by Democrats, whom he spent all fall trying to defeat. To get what he wants, he is going to have to be willing to make deals. How good a deal maker will he be in the political realm?

At least one legislator has signaled her willingness to deal. Sen. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), the incoming chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee recently observed, “While some people want sports stadiums … I want tolls to disappear from Hampton Roads and I want recreational sale of marijuana. Guess we will have to find compromises this session.” Want to make a deal, Governor?

17 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Politics

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Teacher Vacancies in Virginia Cities with a Majority of Black Students Continue to be Very High

Posted on December 15, 2023 by | 32 comments

by James C. Sherlock

The statewide performance of Black kids on Virginia’s SOLs was horrible. Chronic absenteeism is a primary reason.

But I continue to look for underlying reasons and solutions for both.

This morning I checked the Staffing and Vacancy Dashboard.

The teacher vacancy rate for Region 2, Tidewater and the Eastern Shore, is currently the highest in the state at 7.62%. That statistic combines teachers and special education teachers aides and paraprofessionals. There are 3,115 unfilled positions in Region 2.

That region has been the worst in the state for a long time.

The next highest is Central Virginia at 4.9%. Southwest Virginia is lowest at 2.28%.

Region 2 vacancies both in actual numbers and in percentages are always high because school staff vacancies in Hampton Roads’ majority Black urban cities, and their proportion of the region’s public-school population, drive them up.

The data reveal that in divisions with majorities of Black students in the rest of the state, some are very high and some not.

Petersburg, as such things happen, is off the charts.

But there are a major differences in teacher vacancies, and in student performance, between Black kids in Black majority urban cities (Suffolk is a officially a city but not urban) with the honorable exception of Hampton’s Black student SOL scores, and those in Black majority rural counties.

We should perhaps look at what vacancies can tell us.

And another time at what the City of Hampton Public Schools has been doing right for so long. Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, DEI, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Governance

A Brief Case for Giving Virginia Legislators a Raise

Posted on December 13, 2023 by | 6 comments

by Gordon C. Morse

I thought it would be worthwhile to pursue further the subject of legislative compensation in Virginia. A report I’ve  referenced before is dated December 1998 – 25 years ago – and offers the following rationale for increasing the amount paid to Virginia lawmakers holding these posts, attending the annual legislative sessions and all that pertains thereto: 

The significant increase in the time required for members of the General Assembly to carry out their responsibilities, to our way of thinking, requires an increase in compensation and in per diem allowances. In addition to the 90 days required of a legislator for the two sessions of the General Assembly, the time a legislator has to devote to attending meetings of committees, subcommittees and study commissions has increased sharply. Those members of the General Assembly who responded to our questionnaire indicated that they spent from between 30 and 60 days on legislative duties between the sessions of the General Assembly. 

Moreover, a legislator is expected to keep in touch with his constituents and to answer inquiries from them. While the performance of this duty is time-consuming, nevertheless it is necessary for a legislator to keep in touch with the views of those he represents, and to maintain a relationship with them which will reveal their desires and concerns.

There are any number of metrics and tables and summaries and all that in the report. Things sometimes get stashed away casually in the Commonwealth, but I am working on the optimistic belief that other people and/or institutions retained a copy. Legislative demands have increased in the intervening years, along with the willingness of elected lawmakers to make this their primary work in life. The implications of that, undoubtedly, will cause some of the newer members to wonder why the General Assembly is organized the way it is, as well as seed an interest in reform. Others will resist this impulse and I would be inclined to agree with them, that a full-time legislature would be unlikely to produce an improvement in representative democracy.  Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Governance

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Deja Vu, All Over Again

Posted on December 11, 2023 by | 46 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Virginia is trying again to land a sports facility for a national professional sports team, The Washington Post reports. This time it is an arena for the Wizards of the National Basketball Association and the Capitals of the National Hockey League. Both teams have the same owner and are currently located in Washington, D.C.

The facility would be located in Potomac Yards in Alexandria. (If that name sounds familiar, that is where then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder tried to lure the Washington Redskins football team 30 years ago.) According to the Post, the arena would anchor a “massive mixed-use development.” A stadium authority would own the facility and lease it to the company that owns the sports teams. There are no public details on potential costs yet. The owner of the Wizards and the Capitals would be expected to put up “hundreds of millions of dollars of its own money,” with the remainder being provided by the authority. The authority would sell bonds to raise the cash and use revenue from ticket sales, concessions, and parking to repay the bonds (theoretically).  Continue reading →

46 Comments

Posted in Economic development, General Assembly

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Virginia’s Final (Maybe) RGGI Tax Grab: $97M

Posted on December 9, 2023 by | 23 comments

Virginia’s final (maybe) sale of allowances for power plant carbon emissions produced a record $97.4 million. The price for each permit to emit one ton of carbon dioxide, which is passed to customers, has about doubled in four years.

by Steve Haner

Virginia has participated in its final (for a while anyway) Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative auction and the proceeds on the carbon tax set a new record, with Virginia collecting more than $97 million in one swoop. The total carbon tax take for the state is just under $828 million in three years.

The clearing price on December 6 reached $14.88 per ton. It would have been higher but the demand for allowances was so high the RGGI organization released some of its “cost containment reserve” or CCR allowances to tamp down the price increase. The news release on the auction is here. A chart showing Virginia’s proceeds over the three years is attached.

Why the record price? Here’s a solid suggestion: Power producers fear another major winter stressing their systems and know full well that wind and solar are unpredictable and unreliable. They are stocking up on allowances to keep our lights on with fossil fuels.

Just four years ago when the Thomas Jefferson Institute of Public Policy produced this explainer on what RGGI was, the “carbon price” was $5.27 a ton and the prediction was Virginia would collect $150 million a year from electricity producers and eventually their customers. “There is no guarantee the price won’t rise,” we noted, and indeed a steadily rising price for carbon emissions is entirely the point of RGGI.

Pushed by Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) the Air Pollution Control Board voted earlier this year to rescind the state regulation that forces Virginia’s larger electric power plants to purchase allowances from RGGI for every ton of coal, natural gas or oil they burn. So far, efforts to reverse that decision in the courts have failed. Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulations and Government Oversight, Taxes, Utilities

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Proposed Reproductive Freedom Amendment Could Eliminate Limits

Posted on December 8, 2023 by | 31 comments

by Emilio Jaksetic

House Joint Resolution 1 (HJ 1) and Senate Joint Resolution 1 (SJ 1) have been prefiled for consideration of the Virginia General Assembly to propose an amendment to the Virginia Constitution captioned “Article I, Bill of Rights, Section 11-A. Fundamental right to reproductive freedom.” A copy of HJ 1 is available at here and a copy of SJ 1 is available here.

Virginians need to (1) carefully consider the danger that vague and undefined terms in the proposed constitutional amendment could be exploited to advance an agenda that extends far beyond just abortion rights; and (2) consider the need for an alternative proposed amendment that is compatible with compromises likely to be acceptable to a majority of Virginians. Continue reading →

31 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Feminism, Women's Rights, General Assembly

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Governor’s Chronic Absenteeism Task Force – Part Three – Vital New State Roles

Posted on December 7, 2023 by | 11 comments

By James C. Sherlock

A compilation from https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/data-reports/data-collection/special-education

I have found in 18 years of reporting on education in the Commonwealth that each school, each school division and each region is to some degree its own ecosystem.

Taking the example of chronic absenteeism, an individualized assessment of causes could be attempted:

  • if a single school‘s chronic absenteeism can be adjusted statistically for differences in its demographics (race, ethnicity, economic status, English learners, IEPs, etc.) to its division norms, and
  • if that school is a statistical outlier from its division good or bad.

But those are very big if’s because of the complex algorithm that would be required for comparing.  And the results would apply only to that specific school.

I have sometimes compared divisions‘ statistical performances on absenteeism and SOL pass rates against state norms, but usually at the extremes.  There are too many variables to sort among the bulk of them.  At the division level, the variables are as great as at the school level.

Regional differences are there, but causes are hard to pin down beyond differences in demographics and cultures.

That said, and to some degree for that reason, I offer two new state roles for improving school attendance:

  1. marketing, which is either not now done at all or done ineffectively, to increase parents understanding of the value of school; and
  2. investigations and enforcement, which are done sporadically across the state.  That is because of both the time and expertise investigations take and current laws that require schools to involve the court system in enforcement.

Those recommendations are not budget neutral.  This is a budget year.  They are tailored to draw Democratic support.  The time for them is now.

Given the time necessary to prepare proposals, it will likely take a special session to address them.

The chronic absenteeism crisis, appropriately designated by the Governor, rates one.

Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Demographics, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance

Musical Chairs

Posted on December 5, 2023 by | 8 comments

Del. Don Scott (D-Portsmouth),  Speaker-designate

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

One of the most potent powers of the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates is the assigning of members to committees and designating the chair of each committee. He has sole prerogative over this important function.

Speaker-designate Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) has broken a little with tradition (in addition to the other ways he is a “first”).  In the past, a Speaker would wait until a day or two after the Session had convened to release the committee appointments list. In recent days, Scott has been releasing the names of committee chairs, one by one. Perhaps he is hoping to get some publicity for the new chairs, but, so far, the press has taken notice of only one, Sam Rasoul of Roanoke.

These are the chairs named so far:

  • Sam Rasoul (Roanoke)–Education
  • Vivian Watts (Fairfax)–Finance
  • Patrick Hope (Arlington)–Courts of Justice
  • Jeion Ward (Hampton)–Labor and Commerce
  • Mark Sickles (Fairfax)–Health and Human Services
  • Luke Torian (Prince William)–Appropriations

With one exception, none of these appointments is a surprise. Continue reading →

8 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Uncategorized

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Follow-up on Sen. Hashmi

Posted on December 2, 2023 by | 97 comments

Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D-Chesterfield)
Photo credit: VPM

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Kerry Doughtery has evinced a certain amount of outrage on this blog about state Sen. Ghazala Hashni (D-Chesterfield) not living in the district in which she ran and won re-election. (See here and here.)

The recent redistricting had placed Sen. Hashmi’s long-time residence just outside the district which she represented. In order to be able to run in her old district, the senator rented an apartment in that district and listed it as her primary residence. A group of residents filed a petition with the court claiming that she had not abandoned her longtime residence in which her husband still lived. They monitored the movement of the family’s vehicles and claimed that Hashmi still spent time there.

A retired judge has ruled that the evidence showed that Sen. Hashmi had established a domicile at the apartment and thus met the requirements of the law and had not falsified her residency in papers she filed with the Board of Elections. In her testimony, Hashmi said that she had moved furniture and personal effects to the apartment, established an office there, and changed her voting registration and driver’s license to reflect her new address. She did not deny spending some nights at her former home, partly to help care for her husband, who was dealing with a medical issue. She said that she and her husband plan to buy a home in the new district.

My Soapbox

The actions taken by Sen. Hashmi to deal with being redistricted out of her legislative district are not unusual; other legislators have resorted to similar moves in the past. They may not seem right, but they are not illegal. It is amazing that legislators will go to the hassle and expense of renting apartments and then moving, and perhaps uprooting their families, just to remain in the General Assembly.

97 Comments

Posted in Elections, General Assembly, Politics

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Tough Question: What’s Going On at the Virginia General Assembly?

Posted on November 30, 2023 by | 26 comments

by Gordon C. Morse

Forty years ago, I wrote an essay for the Richmond Times-Dispatch — “The Long and the Short of the Assembly” — that noted “a growing sense that the Virginia General Assembly is not performing satisfactorily,” that it had “devolved into an unhappy spectacle.”

Revisiting that essay recently immediately gave me a headache. The question then and now is whether Virginia’s process for considering proposed new laws or enacting changes to existing laws provides sufficient opportunity for the public, as well as the legislative membership, to understand what’s happening at any given moment and, at some level, participate?

It has long been the habit in Virginia – based on 18th, even 17th century inclinations – to simply get lawmaking done, and as quickly as possible. Having sufficient public “access” was not a major hang-up.

To put it another way, doing legislative work in Virginia was always regarded as important, but there were always other, equally important, things to do. Growing and harvesting crops, for instance. Well into the middle of the 20th century, Virginia remained an agrarian economic/social construct. The legislative calendar reflected that reality.

That changed (sort of) with the 1970 revisions to the Virginia Constitution and there’s no need to dive deep on that subject here, except to say that there were, even then, lingering doubts about the efficacy of unrestrained democratic institutions. This concern was most dramatically expressed when, during the 1901-02 Virginia Constitutional Convention, a proposal to hold the General Assembly to a single meeting once every four years was only narrowly defeated.

But a growing state has growing needs — as my prior boss Gov. Gerald L. Baliles once liked to put it — and the remedies enacted more than 70 years ago, which go to the specific lawmaking structure, may no longer be adequate. (That’s an understatement.) Continue reading →

26 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Government Transparency