Tag: Dick Hall-Sizemore
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The Issue of Guardianship and the Contribution of a Newspaper
On Sunday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a remarkable article. It was remarkable both in the amount of space the newspaper dedicated to it, 5½ whole pages, and its subject, guardianship, a subject about which little is known by the public, but that could affect anyone. The publishing of this series of articles illustrates the continuing…
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No Surprise Here
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Both the RTD and Washington Post today reported on the new Speaker-to-be’s first committee chair appointments. (This is one of the real powers of the Speaker of the House of Delegates. He/she gets to make all committee appointments, including the chair of each committee.) The Post was a little more muted, but…
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Inmates Need Costly Medical Care, Too
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In the most recently completed fiscal year, the general fund cost to provide medical care to Virginia prison inmates was $221.6 million. That is a lot of money by any measure; it exceeds the entire budget of all but a few state agencies. However, despite its size, it does not get much…
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A Budget Cut that Should be Made
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Just to show that I am not the “tax and spend” liberal that some people may think I am, I am proposing a significant budget cut for the Governor’s office to consider in its effort to satisfy all the demands it is getting for the upcoming biennial budget. That budget item can…
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The Game of Budgets
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There is lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth going on in this blog and by the administration over the upcoming budget. Although there are some big-ticket budget items, that is nothing new; there always are. Even if the Democrats gain a majority in both houses, I don’t think there will be…
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Prison Sunshine
The Virginia Department of Corrections is getting further into solar energy. The department has recently completed the construction of a five-acre solar farm at Haynesville Correctional Center. The correctional facility is a medium- security prison in Richmond County, near the town of Warsaw, in the Northern Neck region of the state. According to a DOC…
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Why Can’t I Have My Cake And Eat It Too?
Sometimes the tensions and contradictions in our public discourse are summed up with stunning simplicity. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has been running a series setting out the answers of candidates for local office to a set of standard questions. Today the spotlight was on Hanover County. The answers of a long-time incumbent on the Board of…
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More SOQ Money
The other shoe has dropped on the budget requests for K-12. The Department of Education has told the Senate Finance Committee that it will cost approximately $300 million per year over the next biennium to “rebenchmark” the Standards of Quality. This amount would be in addition to the $950 million needed annually to finance the…
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SOQ Examination
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There has been a lot of commentary in recent posts over the state Board of Education’s proposed changes in the Standards of Quality, with a $950 million price tag. Rather than focusing on the total price tag and one component of the proposal (equity fund), it seems to me a more productive…
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You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
Dick Hall-Sizemore As a life-long resident of Virginia for seven decades (there, I have said it), I have seen many changes. Occasionally, reminders of these changes are especially striking. One of those stark reminders occurred about 10 years ago. I was sitting in on a General Assembly committee meeting in which the Chief Justice of…
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Disregard that Law
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Well, Virginia made the national headlines again last week and over the weekend. This time it was over the requirement that couples applying for a marriage license list their race on the application. And Attorney General Mark Herring was the hero, saying that, despite what the law said, the couples did not…
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A Cautionary Note to the Drive to Legalize Pot
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In response to some of the comments to my recent post on crime and drug data, as well as to a running theme on this blog, I want to share a thought-provoking article that I recently encountered. I have long felt that the use of marijuana should not be a criminal offense. …
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Good News, Bad News on Crime Trends
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Each year the state produces six-year forecasts of state and local criminal offender populations. These forecasts are ultimately adopted by an interagency, inter-disciplinary committee, chaired by the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security. The process of producing the forecasts is fairly complicated and stretches over several months, involving numerous meetings. I…
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What?! Us Train Our People?!
Today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the lament of the Associated General Contractors of Virginia that its members are having a hard time finding qualified workers in the building trades, such as plumber, welders, and HVAC technicians. Almost half of the members said “one reason is that the employment pipeline in their communities for training skilled workers…
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An Alternative College Ranking
Coinciding with our discussions here on Bacon’s Rebellion about higher education, I just received the annual Washington Monthly issue with its college rankings. The Monthly takes a significantly different approach to ranking colleges and universities than does the U.S. News and World Report. It identifies the aspects it feels are important in making a college…