Category: General Assembly
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Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
by James C. Sherlock Jim Bacon commented yesterday upon a study underwritten by the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) that said Virginia hospitals were getting shortchanged by health insurers, and that the insurers were charging too much to consumers. We can’t stand still for that, can we? It may have been published in support…
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Paid Leave and Paid Sick Days
by Chris Saxman In a recent column called Hitting the Cutoff Man, I explained the need to work with the business community if you want to solve problems in our economy. I used the famous “There’s no crying in baseball!” scene from A League of Their Own. The lesson was, if you have a goal…
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Cats Win Round One Over Birds At Assembly
by Steve Haner Organized efforts to trap and sterilize feral cats, and then return them to roaming free, operate in legal limbo in Virginia. It is against the law to abandon a companion animal that you have taken into care. The latest attempt to change that has divided animal advocates into snarling camps. Senate Bill…
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Proposed Standards of Quality Changes and Their Fiscal Impact
by James C. Sherlock This essay will present the changes proposed to Virginia public school Standards of Quality proposed by the Board of Education and put forward in identical School Equity and Staffing Act bills in the General Assembly. They represent very significant change. I have annotated each change in law in that bill…
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Biden Ups Vax Plan. Will Northam Be Ready?
by DJ Rippert Joltin’ Joe. President Joe Biden increased his planned administration of the Coronavirus vaccine from 100 million doses in his first 100 days in office to 150 million doses. Given that the United States is already distributing around one million doses per day Biden almost had to increase his plan if he wanted…
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Industrial Escape from Green Energy Costs Blocked
by Steve Haner Virginia’s major energy-intensive industries will not get a requested path to avoid some of the coming cost shock from the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA). The bill that sought them a lifeline was tied to an anvil and sunk in a House of Delegates subcommittee today. It didn’t even help when…
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Fix the Structurally Broken Virginia Government
by James C. Sherlock When offered a choice of reasons for failures of large scale government actions, your first choice should always be incompetence, not bad intentions. Big government requires competent legislatures, competent management and control of executive departments, apolitical oversight by attorneys general and objective studies of its failures if it has any hope…
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Criminal Law and Public Safety Bills of Interest
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Despite recently having a special session to devote to criminal justice reform, the General Assembly has a healthy docket of criminal law and public safety reform bills to consider this session. I have selected a few to highlight below. Unless otherwise noted, the bills are still in their original committees. Democratic Priorities…
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Unintended Consequences of Minimum Wage Hikes
by James C. Sherlock Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and Del. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, contributed an op-ed titled Home health workers at risk without legislative action this morning in the Virginian-Pilot. They will be surprised to read that I agree with every word. And that I would go farther. Unintended consequences in the government economy Lucas…
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Lacshrecse Aird Offers a Road to Nowhere
by James C. Sherlock Jim Bacon today posted an important essay. If you have not yet read it do so. This essay builds upon it. Del. Lacshrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, has offered a joint resolution, apparently destined for passage, that would: “Expand(s) the charge of the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Health Equity to address…
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Election Law Transformation Continues Apace
By Steve Haner As I’ve explained too many times to people who won’t believe it, President Joe Biden won Nov. 3. While there remains no evidence of widespread fraud or error, election law changes achieved by Democrats in key states were a major contributing factor to that outcome. That transformation started here in Virginia in…
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There Is a God and He Has a Sense of Humor
by James C. Sherlock The Left won control of government in the most recent elections nationally and in Virginia. Elections indeed have consequences. The focus on race instead of class by the newly victorious left will have major consequences here. A combination of (1) Biden policies requiring antiracism training for federal workers and contractors; and (2) state…
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The Cost of Criminal Justice Reform
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Examining the projected costs of criminal justice reform enacted by the 2020 Special Session may be a bit of old news, but I think it is still useful. The General Assembly has appropriated $27.2 million for the current biennium to support its criminal justice reform initiatives. If one includes the additional $800,000…
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Confusing “Workplace Harassment” Bill is Back
by Hans Bader “Old bills never die, they just wait for votes,” notes the East Bay Times. A bad bill can die in one legislative session, only to come back with a vengeance in the next session, and get passed due to more intense lobbying, or the death or retirement of opposing lawmakers. That may…
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Taxing the Money That Saved Virginia Jobs
By Steve Haner Concern that Virginia is seeking to tax federal pandemic relief grants to Virginia businesses – grants which kept Virginians employed — is putting a normally routine tax administration bill in jeopardy. The House Finance Committee on Monday approved the annual bill to bring Virginia tax law into conformity with the Internal Revenue…