With just two weeks left before the end of the regular General Assembly session, it’s looking more and more like we’ll be going into overtime to work out a budget on which the House of Delegates, the Senate, and Governor Kaine can all agree. In the meantime, we continue to work on bills that have come over from the Senate as they work their way through the committee system in the House, and I’ve had several more opportunities to fight for good policy and to fight against bad legislation.
Last week, the House of Delegates passed the budget proposed by House Republicans over the opposition of most of us House Democrats. Now that the House and the Senate have approved very different plans, a conference committee will form to negotiate and reconcile the competing proposals. I’m very interested in your feedback on the various plans, so I’ve launched a new constituent survey focused on transportation. I hope you will use the survey to share your views.
One unfortunate aspect of the House Republican budget is more than $12 million in cuts to Virginia’s firefighters. We should never forget that on Sept. 11, 2001, firefighters from Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax were the ones who responded to the attack on the Pentagon and who fought to save many of our friends and neighbors. We need to make sure they have the resources they need to protect our families, and I strongly oppose these cuts. I hope that as we negotiate the final budget we can restore that funding.
When we debated the budget last week, I offered a floor amendment to increase foster care payments, which are so low that it is difficult to recruit and retain foster parents for our most vulnerable children. I knew it was a long shot — floor amendments to the budget rarely succeed — but this is an important issue. The Appropriations Committee chose not to increase foster care payments in the budget plan it sent forward. I could have just left it at that, but I saw a chance for another try and I decided to take it. I argued on the floor that if we can afford to forgo each year more than $100 million in estate taxes that benefit just 1,000 of the wealthiest Virginians, we can afford $3 million each year to benefit 8,000 of our most vulnerable children in foster care. As expected, I did not win the vote on the amendment, but I will continue raising the issue.
Before a bill can go to the governor for him to sign into law, both the House of Delegates and the Senate must pass it in identical form. That means senators are now presenting the bills that passed the Senate to committees in the House, so I’ve been able to work hard to pass positive legislation and fight against harmful bills.
For example, last week the Health, Welfare, and Institutions committee heard Sen. Toddy Puller’s bill to improve coordination between the Department of Corrections and the Department of Social Services on existing services to the children of incarcerated parents. When a small group of conservative Republicans on the committee posed a series of outlandish hypothetical questions obviously intended to kill the legislation, I stepped in to defend the bill, calling out the opposition for its tactics. Together with other Democrats and a few reasonable Republicans on the committee, we narrowly approved the bill. I expect the same group of legislators to try to kill the bill, SB 188, on the House floor, and I’m prepared to defend it there too if necessary. Instead of looking for inane ideological excuses to kill positive legislation, we should be working together to help these children, whose lives are already difficult enough because of an incarcerated parent.
In the Privileges and Elections committee, I’m working to kill a Senate bill that would allow election officials to station armed law enforcement officers at the entrances to polling places all day long on election day. Election officials already have the power to call in law enforcement officers if there are legitimate emergencies, and the existing law against permanently posting armed guards at polling sites is designed to prevent voter intimidation, especially of poor and minority voters. The State Board of Elections opposes the bill, and several of us are working hard to kill it.
Also in Privileges and Elections, Sen. Patsy Ticer presented a bill that would allow victims of domestic violence to register to vote using a post office box instead of a physical address to protect their privacy and thwart abusers trying to track down and harass their victims. Again, opponents of the bill on the committee began asking a series of questions to stymie Sen. Ticer’s efforts. I stepped in to break the momentum of their questioning, pointing out the tragic flaw in existing law that makes it relatively easy for abusers to track down victims who want to exercise their right to vote. Despite compelling testimony from a domestic violence victim, the committee voted to carry over the bill until next year for further study.
I’ve had some success recently working with Republicans to tone down resolutions that otherwise would have been problematic. Del. Ben Cline (R-24) submitted a resolution that, in its original form, would have encouraged the State Board of Education to revise the existing guidelines on religious activities in public schools, further eroding the separation of church and state. As a Jewish parent with a child in public school, this caught my attention. I successfully persuaded Cline to change the language of the resolution to leave the existing guidelines in place, and I even got him to add to include language condemning hostility toward people with no religious beliefs. Del. Kirk Cox (R-66) submitted a resolution commending the 400th anniversary of the original Virginia Charter, including language in his resolution that referred to non-Christians as “savages.” I worked behind the scenes to successfully persuaded him that there is no reason to mark a historic milestone using language so offensive to a great many Virginians, and he changed the resolution to the language I recommended. These are just two small victories that I hope will slowly nudge Virginia in the right direction.
Finally, I was honored to be a guest panelist at a community forum discussing the film “Paragraph 175″ about the Nazi treatment of gays and lesbians during the Holocaust, sponsored by the Interfaith Center for Public Policy. It was a moving film and a very hopeful discussion about both the progressive religious movement and the equal rights movement in Virginia.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns or if I can ever be of service, please contact me at 804-698-1045 or DelDEnglin@house.state.va.us.
