Tag: Stephen D. Haner
-
COVID Workers Comp On House Democrat Bill List
By Steve Haner The coming Special Session of the General Assembly will be narrowly focused but filled with controversy, based on the legislative wish list just released by House of Delegates Democrats. Only two bills listed fall outside of the major categories of “COVID-19 Relief” or “Criminal Justice and Police Reform.” Under the heading “COVID…
-
How To Lessen the November 3 Polling Train Wreck
By Steve Haner If the state and the major political parties do not spend substantial time educating voters about how voting rules have changed, and what has not changed, the lines and delays on November 3 will be incredible. This voter education must start now. The Northam Administration is not known for effective communication, sadly.…
-
Taxaginia Reappears As Special Session Looms
By Steve Haner It must be a reflex. Waken or startle a Democrat and they shout, “raise taxes!” Our friends at the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis came out Monday with a new list of (mostly old) tax proposals for the August 18 General Assembly special session. It drew the attention of Virginia’s Public Radio…
-
How Discount Power For Poor Will Raise Your Bill
By Steve Haner Virginia’s two major electric utilities estimate that as many as 150,000 of their poorest residential customers will see their monthly bills reduced next year using money extracted from all their other customers on their own power bills. Appalachian Power Company projects about 30,000 of its low income customers will receive subsidies of…
-
Limit On Emergency Powers is First Bill
Aaaaaaand, they’re off. The first five bills have been filed for consideration by the August 18 Special Session, all introduced by Senate Republicans. As the list of proposals fills in rapidly, you can track it here. First on the list, surprising no one, is a bill from Senator Steve Newman of the Lynchburg region limiting…
-
VEC: 1.5 Million Unemployment Claims In 2020
By Steve Haner By the end of this amazing year, almost 1.5 million Virginians may have filed claims for unemployment insurance payments, leaving the state’s once-record unemployment trust fund balance of $1.5 billion reduced to $750 million in the red, legislators were told this morning. That $2.25 billion swing is due to $2.6 billion spent…
-
How Employers Must Prevent COVID, Or Else
By Steve Haner The first thing every employer in Virginia needs to understand about the state’s new COVID-19 temporary workplace standard (here) is it is universal. It applies to every workplace, public and private, for-profit and non-profit, with 10,000 workers or two. The rules are the same, “one size fits all,” without regard to the…
-
Ocean Pathfinder Maury Swamped by Culture Wave
Today we get the attempted cancellation of Matthew Fontaine Maury, one of the world’s greatest oceanographers. Having had his memory preserved on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, and having served the Confederate States Navy, any scientific contributions he made before or after the war are hereby nullified, despite worldwide acclaim. The crane is at his statue as…
-
Housing Grants Just a COVID Relief Rounding Error
By Steve Haner Will $50 million be enough? Will that get all the Virginians who have fallen behind due to COVID-19 square on their rent or mortgage payments? Or is that amount, in a relief program now fleshed out by the Northam Administration, merely a start? There is a hint on the program’s web page,…
-
Senate Democrat Promises on Police Reform
By Steve Haner What follows, without edits, is the full list of legislative proposals now endorsed by the Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus. With 21 members, if they all show up and vote aye on all of these, they pass in the upcoming special session. Bills would then have to also pass the House of Delegates…
-
COVID Workplace Rules Endorsed, But Not Final
The Northam Administration’s Safety and Health Codes Board agreed yesterday that COVID-19 in the state’s workplaces demands an emergency state response, but the nature and exact wording of that regulation remains undecided. If adopted, formal regulations come with the potential for heavy penalties for employers cited for failures. Earlier versions of the key documents have already…
-
COVID Regs Unclear, Unneeded, Contradictory
By Steve Haner More than two dozen Virginia business associations have asked that the state’s Safety and Health Codes Board reject proposed workplace regulations to prevent COVID-19, stating they are unclear, contradictory, and not needed in light of other existing worker protections. Some of the largest statewide associations, such as the Virginia Manufacturers Association, National…
-
Sweeping COVID Workplace Regulation Proposed
By Steve Haner The Northam Administration’s Safety and Health Codes Board will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday –- in a virtual process allowing no public interactions – to impose sweeping new regulatory mandates related to COVID-19 on Virginia workplaces. They could take effect immediately upon Governor Ralph Northam’s signature, and will not disappear if an end…
-
Who Pays The Unpaid Bills? Watch Out.
By Steve Haner This was published this morning in The Roanoke Times and then distributed by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. There may be a second wave of COVID-19 disease coming, but the secondary effects of various pandemic economic decisions may hit us sooner. Rent and utility bills customers can delay paying because…
-
The Times-Disgrace Earns Its Nickname
By Steve Haner Competitors of Richmond’s venerable morning newspaper have long teased it with a derogatory nickname: The Richmond Times-Disgrace. With its decision to stop reprinting 75-year-old front pages for some unidentified offense to some unknown persons, the nickname is fully apt. “There are terms and phrases that were used in this newspaper in the…