David Englin, Virginia State Delegate

Affordable Housing: When apartment buildings are being turned into condominiums, allow elderly or disabled tenants to assign their existing first right to purchase their unit to a certified non-profit housing organization, which will rent back the unit to the tenant at an affordable rate.


Hospital Visitation: Require hospitals to allow patients to designate any individual as an authorized visitor, regardless of marital status, gender, or other characteristics.


Clean Air Enforcement: Allow data gathered by monitoring devices to be used to enforce air emissions opacity standards around power plants like the Mirant Plant. (Currently, Department of Environmental Quality staff must observe violations in person to issue citations.)

Public Health: Direct the Virginia Department of Health to conduct the nation’s first ever comprehensive scientific study of the public health effects of trona, the experimental substance being used at the Mirant Plant that many residents fear is damaging their health by increasing particulate pollution.


Flood Insurance: Require the government to notify homeowners when FEMA changes floodplain maps in ways that affect their homes, empowering those homeowners to make informed decisions about flood insurance.

Prescription Drugs: Authorize local governments to participate in the National Association of Counties prescription drug discount program that delivers significant savings on prescription drugs to all residents of participating localities.

Public Safety: Require the Department of Motor Vehicles to create a procedure, modeled on the organ donor program, giving you the option to list the names of your emergency contacts on the back of your drivers license.

Violence Against Children: Make conviction of domestic assault on a child result in a presumption against unsupervised visitation and/or joint legal custody.

Domestic Violence: Count a misdemeanor charge of domestic assault that was continued to dismissal as a conviction for the purpose of the rule where a third misdemeanor domestic assault conviction becomes a felony.

Affordable Housing: Create a three-year pilot project to provide temporary rental assistance for working families, covering the difference between one third of family income and fair market rent while the family transitions from homelessness to financial independence.


Child Welfare: Require child-friendly visiting rooms in state and local correctional facilities.

Election Reform: Close the loophole that allows a Political Action Committee to form and make an indirect contribution to a candidate in the last 10 days before an election without disclosing who is behind the committee.

Electoral College Reform: Enter Virginia into the National Popular Vote compact so that we would assign all of our electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote in presidential elections. (The compact only takes effect when states accounting for a majority of electoral votes have signed on.)

Energy Conservation: Exempt all Energy Star rated products (i.e.: energy-efficient products, including light bulbs, appliances, etc.) from the current 5 percent sales tax.

Equal Housing: Prohibit housing discrimination based on source of income, such as Section 8 vouchers.

Equal Rights: Repeal the constitutional amendment known as the “Marshall/Newman Amendment”, “Question 1″, or the “Marriage Amendment.”

Free Speech for Public Employees: Protect the right of state and local government employees to freely communicate with appointed officials or civil servants without retribution.

Minimum Wage: Close the loophole that allows employers to pay less than minimum wage to employees aged 65 and older. (This loophole exists in state law but not federal law, and federal law applies in nearly all minimum wage cases.)

Open Government: Give the public open access to the live video web broadcast of floor sessions of the House of Delegates. (Currently, only General Assembly staff have access to the web broadcast over their intranet system.)

Progressive Tax Reform: Give local governments the option to replace the current regressive real estate tax system with a progressive local income tax.

Protecting Senior Citizens: Require court-appointed guardians to use real estate professionals when selling real estate owned by the individuals over whom they have guardianship. (This will provide some measure of protection to prevent a guardian from selling a ward’s real estate at well below market rate.)

Real Estate Tax Reform: Allow localities to tax residential and commercial real estate at different rates, helping local governments strike a more equitable balance between commercial and residential real estate tax revenue.

Election Access: Add state and local elections to the requirement that polling places use handicapped-accessible voting machines, which currently is only required for federal elections.

Rehabilitative Services: Makes technical improvements to the statewide brain and spinal cord injury registry program, as requested by the Department of Rehabilitative Services.