Category: General Assembly
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Medicaid, Public Health and Chronic Disease Management
by James C. Sherlock From the CDC: Chronic diseases have significant health and economic costs in the United States. Preventing chronic diseases, or managing symptoms when prevention is not possible, can reduce these costs. Virginia pays a great deal of money every year to contractors who manage the care of its Medicaid population. It is…
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Fix One Thing — School Physical and Electronic Security
by James C. Sherlock I offer an apolitical suggestion. We know how to begin to fix school security. Do it. Step 1. Every school division has a security instruction. How many of them monitor whether that guidance is being followed? I will let them answer that. Step 2. The more complete solution is deployment of…
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A Budget Deal Emerges
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports there is an agreement on the state budget. There have been hints in the news about it all week, with the General Assembly announcing that it would come back to Richmond June 1 to take up various measures. All the details will not be available until late Sunday…
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What the Wind Project Costs You and Who Pays
by Steve Haner If the project goes as planned, the consumer cost for Dominion Energy Virginia’s offshore wind installation will rapidly rise to a peak in 2027 and then descend annually over the following 20 years. If it produces power for 30 years, in the final phase the revenue related to the project will exceed…
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Personnel Shortages that Plague Virginia’s Health Facilities Inspection Staff in the Hands of Budget Negotiators
by James C. Sherlock One of the most important responsibilities of Virginia state government is to inspect medical facilities and home care providers to ensure we are safe when we enter their care. It continues to fail in that responsibility thanks to years of Virginia budgets that have consciously ignored the need for increased inspector…
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Elaine Luria: Facebook Fat Cat
Kerry Dougherty Memo to Rep. Elaine Luria: When you’ve lost the far-left Daily Beast, you may be in trouble. In a surprisingly tough May 12 piece headlined “The Dem May Hate Facebook But Her Stock Portfolio Doesn’t,” Daily Beast political reporter Roger Sollenberger skewered Luria for publicly criticizing Facebook, while owning between $1 million and…
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What’s the Governor Waiting For?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore At the reconvened session on April 27, Governor Youngkin returned 116 bills to the General Assembly with recommended amendments. Legislators accepted the Governor’s recommendations on 91 of those bills. The remaining 25 bills were returned to him as originally passed. The Governor has three options for each of these remaining bills: sign…
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De Facto Secretary?
On April 15, Governor Youngkin issued a press release announcing “additional key administration appointments”. Several of those appointments were duly noted by various newspapers and other media outlets. Others were not, although they are interesting in their own right, raising some issues and shedding light on the administration. Because different issues are raised with different…
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Miyares Challenges Secrecy in Dominion Wind Case
by Steve Haner Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) has moved to open to public inspection much of the secret data and analysis about Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. His petition filed with the State Corporation Commission April 29 comes about two weeks before formal hearings on the application begin in…
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Virginia is the Queen Mother of Bellwethers
by Chris Saxman Honestly, where does one start in trying to explain Virginia politics? Wednesday’s leadership change by House Democrats should not be considered shocking. Democrats had very close contests for caucus control after they won the majority, so losing that majority would naturally jeopardize their leaders. Suffice it to say, Delegate Eileen Filler-Corn has…
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Virginia Democrats in Disarray
by Kerry Dougherty Whoa. That was quick. Unprecedented in recent years, too. Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, the much ballyhooed first female Speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, as well as the commonwealth’s first Jewish speaker, was tossed overboard Wednesday from her leadership role in the Democratic caucus by fellow party members. Five months after Republicans regained…
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A Different Tone
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There have been some complaints lately about how the Richmond newspaper should be called the Richmond Times-Dominion, due to its biased coverage in favor of the utility. While I agree with a lot of the criticism about taking a Dominion news release, rewriting it and then publishing it as news, a sentence…
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General Assembly to Governor: Not So Fast
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The page 1 lead story of Saturday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch announced what anybody who had been paying attention already knew: the General Assembly will not be taking up the biennial budget bill when it convenes on Wednesday. However, that does not mean the legislators will be able to leave early. They have a…
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Unionize Virginia’s Worst Nursing Home Chains
by James C. Sherlock If you go back to the series of articles I published here in October of 2021, you can refresh your memory on the dangers represented by Virginia’s worst nursing home chains. If you look at the complete spreadsheet of every Virginia nursing home from that data sorted by ownership, the bad…
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Fix the Virginia Department of Health
by James C. Sherlock Governor Youngkin and his new administration have an opportunity to fix crucial problems in the Department of Health that have been festering for decades. The issues: How can Virginia regulate effectively its state-created healthcare monopolies? In a directly related matter, how can we fix the failures, famously demonstrated during COVID, of…