Author: Dick Hall-Sizemore
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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…
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Early Fireworks
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The 2022 General Assembly has gotten off to an inauspicious start. It started off quietly enough. On Wednesday, the first day, Delegate Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, was elected Speaker on vote of 97-0. It is not usual for the person selected by the majority party caucus to be Speaker to be formally elected…
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A Peek Behind the Veil
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Background During my research for the articles on state financial assistance for public education, I ran across a curious provision and, subsequently, tracked the history of that provision. That history provides a small peek at the budget development and legislative processes that illustrate: Why I find them so fascinating, and Why many…
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Financing Public Education–2–Non-SOQ Programs
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Note: This is the second installment of an overview and discussion of state financing of K-12 education in localities. Part 1 of this series was an overview of financing related to the Standards of Quality. The Standards of Quality is the major category through which the Commonwealth provides financial assistance for public…
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Financing Public Education–Part I, Standards of Quality
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The 2022-2024 budget proposed by Governor Northam includes $8.6 billion in general fund appropriations in the first year and $8.3 billion in the second year for state assistance to local K-12 programs. These amounts are a little more than a quarter of the entire general fund budget. Compared to the appropriation for…
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Help Wanted
by Dick Hall-Sizemore I had heard about the problem with restaurant staffing, but had not experienced it. During the pandemic, my wife and I have relied on two local Italian restaurants for both takeout and eating out. Both restaurants reopened as soon as they could, and both retained the same staff they have had for…
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Bureaucrats Are Not Running Amok
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In a couple of recent posts, much has been made of Governor-elect Youngkin’s comments about reviewing regulations. After thinking about this promise and remembering similar promises by former governors, I decided to undertake one of my favorite exercises: poking around in the Code of Virginia a little bit. I found two items…
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Redistricting Now Final
By Dick Hall-Sizemore The redistricting for General Assembly seats and those in the U.S. House of Representatives is complete. The Virginia Supreme Court issued its final order and approved maps on December 28, 2021. There are some significant changes from the earlier proposed maps. For a discussion of the first maps released by the Supreme…
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Embarrassing Managerial Incompetence
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The Northam administration has just had an embarrassing case of managerial incompetence exposed. A series of articles by the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Patrick Wilson (here, here, and here) sets out the story of the Department of Health laying off 14 state employees who monitor drinking water systems across the state, including six field…