David Englin, Virginia State Delegate

David spent today’s morning rush hour at the Braddock Road Metro station meeting constituents and giving them an update on legislation from the regular General Assembly session that ended March 11.

“It’s always great to connect with my people and find out what issues are on their minds,” said David. “Folks seemed very aware of the budget impasse, and a number of constituents urged me to keep pushing for long-term, dedicated funding for transportation, which of course I will continue to do.”

Later in the day, David received several emails from constituents thanking him for his work.

“Thank you for coming to the Braddock Road Metro station this morning,” wrote one constituent, “In all my voting years prior to moving to Virginia . . . I never received an update of this kind, and I think it’s extremely helpful.”

“Just wanted to send a note to thank you for distributing the flyer at the Braddock Road Metro this morning,” wrote another of David’s constituents. “I really appreciate getting this kind of information in such an accessible format. You’ve sealed my vote if you decide to run again!”

“It’s all part of the service!” said David. “People have the right to know what their General Assembly is up to.”

The regular session of the 2006 General Assembly adjourned Saturday evening without having completing the Commonwealth’s biennial budget, marking the third time in five years the Republican-controlled legislature has failed to fulfill its constitutional duty on time. The most frustrating aspect of the budget impasse is that four of the five players in the process — Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, House Democrats, and the governor — all agree that the budget must include a long-term, statewide, transportation solution that protects funding for education, public safety, health care, and job creation. Only the House Republicans stand in opposition to what is otherwise a forward-looking bipartisan effort. Before the final gavel closed the regular session, Governor Kaine ordered an upcoming special session to address this crisis. As I was driving home from Richmond to Alexandria on I-95 on Saturday evening, traffic backed up and slowed to 35 miles per hour in several places, as if to punctuate what’s at stake if we fail when the General Assembly convenes for the special session on March 27.

Despite failing to produce a budget, the General Assembly did pass a number of other bills this session that now await the governor’s signature. Bill’s I sponsored to rein in emissions of coal-fired power plants, to increase production of renewable biofuels, to create health insurance pools for small businesses, to begin the process of withdrawing Virginia from No Child Left Behind, to improve retirement benefits for emergency medical technicians, to help discharged prisoners more successfully transition into society, and to facilitate construction of the new T.C. Williams High School all passed with great success. I also helped pass bills to allow local governments to exempt more senior citizens from paying real estate taxes, to create an annual sales-tax holiday for back-to-school clothing and supplies, to lower the cost of textbooks for college students, to ban the death penalty for minors, to impede the production of the street drug meth-amphetamine, and to reform Virginia’s communication tax structure, which will lower monthly out-of-pocket expenses on communications services for the vast majority of my constituents.

Just as important as the bills we passed were some of the bills we defeated. We killed bills and sections of bills to use unnecessary regulations to shut down nearly every abortion provider in Virginia, to expand the use of the death penalty, to prevent local governments from requiring people applying for concealed weapons permits to be fingerprinted, and to give local school boards the power to restrict Gay-Straight Alliances, which promote tolerance and understanding among students. The effort to repeal the estate tax, which would forgo more than $100 million in revenue to benefit about 1,000 of the wealthiest Virginians, failed because the House and the Senate could not agree on the details. I support exempting family farms and closely-held small businesses from estate taxes, but I strongly believe that we should not slash taxes on the very wealthiest Virginians while we raise taxes on working people and also fail to properly fund foster care, child welfare services, and other efforts to give poor, vulnerable children a fair shot at the American dream.

I will be out and about throughout the 45th District between now and when the General Assembly goes into special session on March 27, so I hope you will take the opportunity to say hello and to share your thoughts on the budget impasse, the transportation crisis, or any other issue on your mind. Feel free to contact me or my legislative assistance, Beth Isaacs, at 703-549-3203 or DelDEnglin@house.state.va.us if we can ever be of service.

Short of a miracle breakthrough in budget negotiations this week, most of my colleagues and I expect the current General Assembly session to go into overtime beyond the scheduled March 11 end date. However, since the regularly scheduled session is drawing to a close, I thought I would take this opportunity to thank the thousands of constituents who have contacted me about so many different issues, from my opposition to the marriage amendment and the bill to restrict the use of soccer fields, to my support for the Clean Smokestacks Act, which I sponsored, to the other myriad issues we have addressed one way or another this session. Even if you contacted me about an issue on which we might not agree, I hope you found me willing to listen to your point of view and open to an ongoing discussion so we can move our community forward together.

Thank you also to everyone who has taken my new constituent survey on the various transportation budget plans. If you have not yet done so, please go online here and take the survey and tell me what you think about the options on the table. This will help me represent you better as the budget process moves forward.

Speaking of that process, last week, the House and the Senate rejected each other’s budgets, and both bodies appointed members to the conference committee that must negotiate and reconcile two very different plans. As I have noted before, the House plan fails to make the investments necessary to address Northern Virginia’s transportation needs, and what little money the House plan puts into transportation comes mostly from debt issued using money from the general fund that would otherwise go toward education, public safety, and social services. The Senate budget is not perfect — it includes a rather bizarre formulation that would have us saving our gas receipts for mail-in tax rebates — but it does get us to the $1 billion a year we need for transportation, it includes long-term dedicated funding for transportation, including Metro, and it protects money for education, public safety, and social services. Now that the business community is weighing in to support the principles contained in the budget plans offered by the Senate and the governor, I hope we can start to move forward and deliver a responsible budget that addresses our transportation problems without harming education, public safety, and other core services. (And, ideally, without the mail-in rebate provision of the Senate plan.)

I recently received a number of calls and emails about HB 568, which will reform Virginia’s antiquated system of communication taxes. I support this bill because it will make Virginia’s communication taxes more simple and more fair while also slightly lowering the cost of living for the vast majority of residents of the 45th District. The average consumer in Virginia pays a communication tax rate of 31 percent, which is nearly double the national average. HB 568 eliminates four existing communication taxes and replaces them with a low, across the board rate of five percent for all billed communication services. A number of satellite radio customers have expressed concern to me that they are not exempt from the five percent flat tax. It is true that satellite radio subscribers will now pay about $0.60 a month in taxes. However, the lowering of taxes and fees on services like residential telephones, cell phones, and cable T.V. will offset this minimal tax on satellite radio service, so even most satellite radio subscribers will see an overall decrease in their monthly out-of-pocket expenses.

In a note of good news, the Senate killed two bills that passed the House over my strong opposition. HB 1308 was sponsored by a conservative legislator from the Shenandoah Valley, Del. Matt Lohr (R-26), and it would have given school boards the power to restrict Gay-Straight Alliances, which promote respect and tolerance in our public schools. Del. Lohr and I have a good relationship despite our very different political views, but I was glad to see the Senate Health and Education committee defeat this unfortunate bill. HB 164, sponsored by Del. Scott Lingamfelter (R-31), would have threatened the effective, responsible, comprehensive family life education programs in our public schools. This bill also died in the Senate Health and Education committee, which appears to have become a bulwark against some very bad legislation. In another bit a good news, last week the House passed Senator Toddy Puller’s bill to improve coordination of services to the children of incarcerated parents, which I defended and helped narrowly pass out of the Health, Welfare, and Institutions committee.

We should have a better idea this weekend whether the General Assembly session will go right into overtime or whether we will recess for a few weeks before returning for a special session. Whatever happens, please don’t forget that I am here to serve you even when the General Assembly is not in session. I will soon be releasing a Constituent Services Guide pamphlet that you can use as a reference to the many ways I stand ready to help throughout the year, and I look forward to seeing you at your door or at Metro stops and other venues around the 45th District so we can chat about the issues and you can share your ideas and concerns. As always, please contact me if I can ever be of service.