Alexandria

 ”While I’m pleased to see the Woodrow Wilson Bridge project coming down the home stretch, this important phase of construction will be a real challenge for our community, so I urge drivers to be well informed and plan accordingly,” said Delegate David Englin (D-45), who represents the area most affected by the construction.

Up to now, most of the new ramp work has been done with minor impacts to traffic.  However, in order to proceed, contractors must demolish the existing Outer Loop ramp to Telegraph Road North and detour travelers on a temporary exit ramp that ends at a traffic signal to turn left onto northbound Telegraph Road. While the traffic signal will be timed to allow the maximum number of vehicles to pass, the temporary red light will reduce the number of vehicles that can pass on both Telegraph Road North and the Outer Loop ramp to Telegraph Road North.  The traffic signal is anticipated to remain in place until late 2010, when the ramp connecting the Outer Loop to Telegraph Road North will be completed.

“Later this year, commuters and other travelers will be able to enjoy direct, easy access into this growing region by way of these three new ramps,” said Ronaldo T. “Nick” Nicholson, VDOT Woodrow Wilson Bridge project manager and regional transportation program director. “The ramps also will decrease traffic on Telegraph Road North and Pershing Avenue, and will include new paths that will allow pedestrians and bicyclists easy access to the Eisenhower Valley from south of the Beltway.”

Near-term closures and reconfigurations:

Over the weekend of March 19-21, the Outer Loop exit to Telegraph Road North will be rerouted, and exits/on-ramps for the Inner Loop realigned.  This will allow crews to complete the new ramps and to demolish and replace portions of old Beltway bridges in this corridor during the 2010 construction season.

Motorists are advised to avoid this part of the Beltway during this weekend or seek alternate routes to their destination to avoid delays.  Variable message signs (VMS) will be posted in advance to alert motorists to the shift activities.

Details of the lane and ramp closures and descriptions of the temporary detours are as follows:

Friday, March 19 overnight impacts:

• Weather permitting, beginning at 9 p.m. on Friday, March 19, the current exits from the Beltway Outer Loop (I-95/495 North) to Telegraph Road North and South will be closed and Beltway traffic will be narrowed in the area to one lane.  Motorists traveling the Outer Loop who wish to access Telegraph Road should use the earlier Eisenhower Connector exit (#174).
• By 10 p.m., the Beltway Inner Loop (I-95/495 South) exit to Telegraph Road North and Pershing Avenue will be closed.  The detour for this closure is also for motorists to use the Eisenhower Connector exit (#174). This exit will re-open in the early hours of Saturday morning.
• Around midnight, a second Outer Loop traffic lane will reopen.
• By 8 a.m. Saturday morning, all Outer Loop lanes and the new Outer Loop temporary exit to Telegraph Road North will be open to traffic.

What the results will mean to drivers:

• Outer Loop drivers bound for Telegraph Road North will exit earlier than they are accustomed to via a temporary ramp accessed from the current ramp to Telegraph Road South (Exit 176A).  This temporary ramp will run parallel to the existing Huntington Avenue exit ramp, and will come to a signal to turn left (north) onto Telegraph Road.
• Once north of the Beltway, motorists bound for Duke Street will use the two left Telegraph Road North lanes, which will proceed without interruption. The right lane will become a right-turn onlylane onto Pershing Avenue for motorists who wish to access the Eisenhower Valley, and will be controlled by a temporary traffic signal.
• The temporary traffic signal at Pershing Avenue should be in place less than four months. It will be removed as soon as the ramp from Telegraph Road North to Eisenhower Avenue opens.
• Rush hour delays to Outer Loop traffic are not expected to worsen because of this temporary ramp.  Outer Loop to Telegraph Road ramp traffic may be delayed up to 15 minutes. Also, the AM north bound rush hour travel time on Telegraph Road is expected to take up to 20 minutes longer. This condition may last up to 8 months.
• Motorists are strongly advised to seek alternate routes for these two impacted conditions, e.g. Outer Loop to Telegraph Road could exit at the Eisenhower Connector (#174) and get to Telegraph Road via Eisenhower Avenue; northbound Telegraph Road travelers could travel via Van Dorn.

Saturday, March 20 overnight impacts:

• Weather permitting, beginning at 9 p.m. on Saturday, March 20, traffic on the Beltway Inner Loop (I-95/495 South) local and thru lanes will be narrowed to one lane each just west of U.S. Route 1.  The on-ramp from Telegraph Road North to the Beltway Inner Loop will be closed, with a detour via Pershing Avenue.  The Inner Loop exits to Telegraph Road South will be closed and traffic will be detoured to the Eisenhower Connector (exit #174). Inner Loop traffic will be able to access Telegraph Road North and Pershing Avenue.
• Route 1 traffic accessing the Inner Loop will be directed to the thru lanes, with no access to Telegraph Road.
• By midday on Sunday, all three Inner Loop lanes (one local and two thru) and all ramps will be reopened to traffic.

What the results will mean to drivers:

• Starting Sunday, drivers will see a separated exit/access lane on the Inner Loop to the right of normal travel lanes that will allow vehicles to exit to Telegraph Road South, and allow traffic to merge onto the Inner Loop from north and southbound Telegraph Road.
• The ‘exit only’ lane from the Inner Loop to Telegraph Road South will occur earlier than presently.  One travel lane for Inner Loop local traffic will continue, then merge with the two Inner Loop thru lanes.
• No travel times through the work zone are expected to increase for Inner Loop travelers because of this shift. The temporary on-ramp alignments from Telegraph Road to the Inner Loop, with shortened acceleration distances and no-merge yield conditions, will create slightlylonger entrance times – most especially during the PM rush hour.

In the event of weather delays, the overnight work scheduled for March 19 will be rescheduled for the night of March 20, and the overnight work scheduled for March 20 will take place the night of Friday, March 26.

Longer-term 2010 activities:

A second temporary traffic configuration will occur in summer 2010, approximately four months after the March start date and upon completion of the new ramp from Telegraph Road North to Eisenhower Avenue.  During this stage, Outer Loop traffic will continue to use the temporary exit to Telegraph Road North, then will be able to continue straight toward Duke Street or turn right onto the new ramp to Eisenhower Avenue. The new bike and pedestrian path will open on the new ramp.  The temporary signals at Telegraph Road and Pershing Avenue will be removed.

A third configuration will occur in fall 2010, approximately eight months after the March start date. In this configuration, the new Outer Loop exit will open to provide direct access to either Telegraph Road North or the Eisenhower Valley, and the new Inner Loop ramp to Telegraph Road North will open.  At this point, there will be no temporary traffic impacts for Outer Loop travelers exiting for Telegraph Road and motorists will be able to fully enjoy the new ramp access.

While Inner Loop traffic is shifted left on the bridges over Telegraph Road and Cameron Run, crews will continue to demolish the old bridges and build the replacements that will become the local lanes.  By the end of the 2010 construction season, the goal is to have all traffic on the new local lane bridges and off the deteriorating old bridges.  The plan is to also have all Telegraph Road/Beltway on/off ramps in their final and permanent configuration by the end of this year.

To preview the improvements coming to the Telegraph Road interchange, and for details and visuals of the traffic configurations for the 2010 construction season, visit the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project website at www.wilsonbridge.com.

The good news is that we won some key concessions from House Republicans, making the final overall budget less bad than the House version of the budget hey passed Feb. 25.  For example, the original House budget contained a plan to lump preschool, early reading intervention, and services for at-risk children into a lottery-funded block grant and then change the distribution formula to literally take money away from poor students and give it to students who are not poor.  We soundly defeated this proposal, saving Alexandria and Arlington a combined $3.6 million in public education funds for poor and at-risk students.  The original House budget redirected new federal Medicaid enhancement money from health care for the neediest Virginians to non-health care programs, leaving on the table $730 million of federal matching funds.  Again, we defeated this proposal and preventing an additional $1.1 billion cut.  We also prevented the elimination of homeless intervention grants, reduced cuts to the Healthy Families early intervention program, and stopped the elimination of the Virginia Commission for the Arts, which is a proven job creator in our area.

However, even these concessions do not make up for the fact that the final budget still cuts billions of dollars from public education, health care for the poor, public safety, and aid to localities, with no serious attempt to mitigate these cuts with revenue and no serious attempt to give localities the power to mitigate these cuts on their own.  (On the latter point, I happen to sit on the committee that hears bills to broaden local revenue authority so homeowners and renters aren’t forced to bear the entire burden through real estate tax increases; the “no tax pledge” Republican majority on the committee killed all of these measures, thus forcing property taxes increases as the primary local revenue tool.)  Even worse, the final budget still includes a risky, $800-million scheme to divert state contributions from the state pension trust fund, which will put Virginia’s triple-A bond rating at risk and threaten our ability to meet our pension obligations to teachers, fire fighters, law enforcement officers, and state and local employees. 

While I commend Senate Democrats for their hard work in defeating some of the more egregious elements of the budget House Republicans proposed, and I appreciate the fact that House Republicans were responsive some of the concerns we House Democrats raised so vocally, the final product does not represent the best set of choices for the people of Virginia, so I voted against it.  On final note on the matter: In years past, legislators were given at least 24 hours to review the final negotiated budget so we could understand its intricacies prior to casting an up or down vote.  This year, we were given an hour.  This is one of the many flaws with our budget process I will continue working to reform, since effective democracy demands transparency and accountability.  After all, the budget belongs to people of Virginia, and not to the small handful of Delegates and Senators who, behind closed doors hammer out details that will affect our families and our communities for years to come.

Budgets are moral documents that express our values as a Commonwealth and determine whom we lift up and whom we leave out. While the final version of the budget is less bad than the initial House version, I still cannot justify supporting a budget that balances the books on the backs of children and the poor and that includes a fiscally irresponsible shell game with the state pension trust fund.

Thanks to strong, unified, vocal opposition from House Democrats, the final budget is less bad than the budget House Republicans passed Feb. 25. For example, the final budget rejected the Republican plan to take money away from poor students and give it to students who are not poor, and it rejected the Republican plan to redirect federal Medicaid enhancement money from health care for the neediest Virginians to non-health care programs.

However, these concessions do not make up for the fact that the final budget cuts billions of dollars from public education, health care for the poor, public safety, and aid to localities, with no serious attempt to mitigate these cuts with revenue and no serious attempt to give localities the power to mitigate these cuts in their own. Even worse, the final budget still includes a risky, $800-million scheme to divert state contributions from the state pension trust fund, which will put Virginia’s triple-A bond rating at risk and threaten our ability to meet our pension obligations to teachers, fire fighters, law enforcement officers, and state and local employees.

Delegate David Englin is Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and is serving his third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represents the 45th District, which includes parts of the City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington County. He serves on the Finance Committee, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee, and the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee. For more information, visit http://www.davidenglin.org.

Ralph Robbins, Executive Director of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board, Galit Baram, Counselor for Public and Academic Affairs, and Ben Sack, Senior Officer for Public Affairs, represented the Embassy of Israel.  They were joined by Ralph Robbins, Executive Director of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board.  The group discussed Virginia’s progress divesting the Commonwealth’s pension trust fund investments from companies providing military support to Iran, as well as the Virginia Israel Advisory Board’s ongoing success at creating jobs in Virginia by partnering with high-tech companies in Israel.

“The strong relationship between Virginia and Israel continues to reap economic rewards, and I am pleased to be a part of its success,” said David.

“It was especially rewarding to bring good news on issues such as Virginia’s Iran divestment activities and the Virginia Israel Advisory Board’s top initiatives in creating jobs,” said Debra Gold Linick, Assistant Director for DC and Northern Virginia of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, who organized the visit.

Click here for more information about the Virginia Israel Advisory Board.

We have had much discussion on the House floor this week about whether our great Commonwealth will be a place where workers are judged on the job they do and not the families they go home to. Late yesterday, Governor McDonnell responded to our calls for employment nondiscrimination with a memo stating that he will not tolerate discrimination based on sexual orientation or other non-merit factors for the state employees under the supervision of his office. I want to thank Governor McDonnell for responding to our outcry against anti-gay bigotry, and to the demands of Northern Virginia’s business community, with this small step forward. Moreover, I think it says something important about the progress we have made as nation when a conservative politician with national political aspirations feels the need to move a bit closer to the right side of history on this issue.

While a product of national ambition and political necessity, this is still a step in the right direction. However, it’s very important that we understand that Governor McDonnell’s directive does not carry the force of law. Therefore, now that Governor McDonnell has shown new openness on this issue, I hope he will work with us to send down a bill or support our other legislative efforts so together we can make employment nondiscrimination the law of the land in Virginia. 

Delegate David Englin is Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and is serving his third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represents the 45th District, which includes parts of the City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington County. He serves on the Finance Committee, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee, and the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee.

Richmond – For the third consecutive day on the floor of the House of Delegates, Virginia Democrats stood against the anti-gay efforts of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who issued a letter to Virginia’s public colleges and universities March 4 advising them to repeal nondiscrimination policies protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender faculty, staff, and students.

Urging Republicans to join their effort, Delegate David Englin (D-45) offered the following remarks:

Mr. Speaker, Ladies and Gentlemen, as you just heard from the Gentleman from Henrico, Delegate Morrissey, at public colleges across Virginia, students, faculty, and tuition-paying parents share the outrage you have heard expressed on this floor about Attorney General Cuccinelli’s demand that Virginia’s colleges remove sexual orientation from their nondiscrimination rules. They share our outrage, and they want action. We have tried multiple times in this House and on the floor to fix this problem. Sadly, the General Laws committee chose to cancel its Monday meeting rather than work to move forward with the Senate nondiscrimination bill. That’s especially unfortunate, because I believe there are good people on both sides of the aisle in that committee who should be willing to do what’s right on this issue. Yesterday, we tried the extraordinary measure of a discharge motion to bring up that bill, but that, too, was defeated. Now, our last chance to protect the quality, reputation, and accreditation of Virginia’s public colleges and universities, and to protect Virginia’s pro-business climate, is for us to join together and urge Governor McDonnell to send down his own higher education nondiscrimination bill.

Even if one is willing to set aside the moral outrage that is an Attorney General wasting taxpayer money by seeking to hinder equal protection under the law, we need Governor McDonnell to act now because his Attorney General’s actions are destructive to higher education and destructive to our economic future.

Virginia’s public colleges and universities have nondiscrimination policies in place not only because judging faculty, staff, and students on merit is the right thing to do, but also because their accreditation requires it. For example, the national accrediting bodies that govern medical schools, teacher training programs, and schools of social work require nondiscrimination policies as part of their accreditation standards. After all, do you really think a conservative institution like Liberty University would include sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policies unless it absolutely had to? Ask yourself, do you really want to let Ken Cuccinelli’s anti-gay crusade risk the accreditation of our schools?

Moreover, the quality of higher education in Virginia is a key factor in our continued ranking by Forbes.com and others as the Best State for Business. By sullying the reputation of our system of higher learning and hindering the ability of our top universities to recruit and retain the very best faculty and staff, the Attorney General is risking our future status as Best State for Business. Ask yourself, do you really want to let Ken Cuccinelli’s anti-gay crusade risk Virginia’s status as Best State for Business?

And speaking of business, businesses throughout Virginia understand that employees should be judged solely on their merit and not on other unrelated factors. The ten largest corporate employers in Virginia have active nondiscrimination policies. Northrop Grumman, whose corporate headquarters we are trying to lure here from California, wins perfect marks from the Human Rights Campaign for equal treatment of its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers. Do you really want to let Ken Cuccinelli’s anti-gay crusade risk thousands of good-paying jobs in Virginia?

Mr. Speaker, this issue is not going away.

I recognize that it takes no special courage for a Northern Virginia liberal to stand up — every day if necessary — to demand fair and equal treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers.

But I remind you that conservative Republican icon, Barry Goldwater, said of gays in the military, “I don’t care if they are straight, as long as they shoot straight.” In other words, the father of the modern American conservative movement urged that we judge workers not on their sexual orientation, but on their merit.

What we need in this case are more Barry Goldwaters. We need men and women of courage from across the aisle to stand up and say that — even if you are uncomfortable with the idea of somebody being gay — even if your faith or your personal beliefs cause you to oppose same-sex relationships — you still believe that workers should be judged on merit — on the job they do.

We need men and women of courage from across the aisle who know in their heart of hearts that, decades from now, standing up for policies that treat workers fairly and based on merit will put them on the right side of history — men and women who will someday be revered for standing up for the rights of all people, and not painted with the same brush as bigots and segregationists.

Ladies and Gentlemen, based on yesterday’s vote, Delegates Albo, Rust, LeMunyon, Tata, and Villanueva are Republicans who are on the right side of history. But what about the rest of you?

I ask my other Republican friends: “Are there any Barry Goldwaters among you?” Or are you content to stand idly by, in silent complicity, and let Ken Cuccinelli destroy what we have worked to build.

Join us — urge Governor McDonnell to send down a bill that will protect the quality and reputation of higher education in Virginia, so together we can let the world know that Virginia is a place where employees will be judged on the job they do, not on the family they go home to.

Additionally, Delegate Ken Plum (D-36), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, yesterday attempted an extraordinary procedural effort to bring to the House floor an employment nondiscrimination bill that passed the Senate on Feb. 8. During debate on that motion, Englin offered the following:

Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, when my grandparents and great parents came to these shores decades ago from a shtetl in Poland and a village in Italy, they were poor, hardworking people, seeking freedom and grateful for the opportunity to put in a hard days work to put food on the table and roof over their heads. But in those days, prospective employers would put up signs that read things like “Jews Need Not Apply” and “Italians Not Welcome.” Mr Speaker, maybe Governor McDonnell’s forbearers were met with signs reading “No Irish Allowed.” We have moved beyond that as a country, and today most employers would no sooner discriminate against Jews, Italians, or Irish than they would against their own family. But let there be no mistake, Ken Cuccinelli wants to hang a sign in front of Virginia’s public colleges and universities that reads “Gays Need Not Apply.”

Unfortunately, these efforts have yet to be successful, but these pro-equality legislators remain committed to working to advance equal rights for all Virginians.

Delegate David Englin is Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and is serving his third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represents the 45th District, which includes parts of the City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington County. He serves on the Finance Committee, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee, and the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee. For more information, visit http://www.davidenglin.org.

Even if one is willing to set aside the moral outrage that is an attorney general working to hinder and revoke equal protection under the law, his actions are destructive to Virginia’s economic future.  Businesses throughout Virginia understand that employees should be judged solely on their merit and not on other unrelated factors.  The ten largest corporate employers in Virginia have active nondiscrimination policies.  Northrop Grumman, whose corporate headquarters we are trying to lure here in competition with Maryland and D.C., consistently wins perfect marks from the Human Rights Campaign for equal treatment of its gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender workers.  The quality of Virginia’s public colleges and universities is a key factor in our continued ranking by Forbes.com and others as the Best State for Business.  By sullying the reputation of our system of higher learning and hindering the ability of our top universities to recruit and retain the very best faculty and staff, Cuccinelli risks our future status as Best State for Business.

Fortunately, condemnation of Cuccinelli’s anti-gay activism comes not only from Democrats and not only from our area.  Former Delegate Vince Callahan, who represented McLean in the House for 40 years and was the powerful Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, called Cuccinelli’s move “reprehensible.”  The author of Too Conservative, a prominent Northern Virginia Republican blog, condemned Cuccinelli’s move and urged its repudiation.  The conservative-leaning editorial page of the Richmond Times Dispatch acknowledged that Virginia’s “backward-looking attitudes on gay rights” could cause major businesses to locate elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the one Virginian who could step up and address this issue quickly has been virtually silent.  Governor Bob McDonnell first refused to issue an employment nondiscrimination executive order for state employees (which includes faculty and staff at public colleges and universities) and then he issued an order but conspicuously excluded protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  He maintains that only the General Assembly can grant those protections, but then he stood by in silent complicity as House Republicans killed the House and Senate bills that would have done just that.  On Monday, I urged McDonnell to stand up to his rogue attorney general and send down a bill with the weight of his office behind it to make employment nondiscrimination Virginia law, which would render Cuccinelli’s opinion moot.

Sadly, McDonnell has maintained his silence and refuses to send down a bill, so House Democrats made an extraordinary motion Tuesday to bring Senator Don McEachin’s (D-9) employment nondiscrimination bill to a vote in the full House of Delegates.  This legislation, Senate Bill 66, passed the Senate on Feb. 8, and the Republican majority of the House General Laws Committee tabled it from further consideration on March 3.  Our “discharge motion” was intended to give the full House of Delegates, including a few supportive moderate Republicans, an opportunity to try to pass this bill and make employment nondiscrimination the law.  While admittedly this is a rarely used “nuclear option” under the House rules, we could not not — and I would not — stand idly by while the Office of the Attorney General bullies and marginalizes gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Virginians.  Unfortunately, the Republican majority used a procedural maneuver to defeat our effort, but we will keep fighting until all Virginia employees are judged by the job they do, and not the family they go home to.

Contact me at DelDEnglin@house.virginia.gov or 703-549-3203 to share your views about this and other matters facing the General Assembly.  Thank you for the honor of representing you.

Richmond

“As an Air Force veteran, I’m especially honored to have been given the opportunity to work more closely with the Civil Air Patrol, whose great work — especially in terms of search and rescue operations — contributes to the safety and security of our community and the nation,” said Englin.

“We are grateful that Delegate Englin has taken the time to recognize the important role Civil Air Patrol and other volunteer organizations play in making Virginia a safer and more livable state for its citizens,” said Col. Dave Carter, commander of the Virginia Wing.

The Virginia Legislative Squadron was chartered this year to provide information to lawmakers and facilitate cooperation between CAP and state agencies for the services CAP provides.

Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, is a nonprofit organization with 59,000 members nationwide.  CAP, in its Air Force auxiliary role, performs 90 percent of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center and was credited by the AFRCC with saving 72 lives in fiscal year 2009.  Its volunteers also perform homeland security, disaster relief and counter-drug missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies.  The members play a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to more than 24,000 young people currently participating in CAP cadet programs.  CAP has been performing missions for America for 68 years.

A 1996 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Delegate David Englin is Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and is serving his third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represents the 45th District, which includes parts of the City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington County.  He serves on the Finance Committee, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee, and the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee.

Virginia House of Delegates Rejects Anti-Discrimination Bill

Richmond

“The new annual report created by the final bill will be more useful and transparent than existing reports, moving the ball forward on budget transparency and scrutiny,” said Englin.  “However, this is just the beginning of what I expect will be a multi-year effort to ensure these expensive tax benefits receive as much scrutiny as the appropriations in the budget so we can make informed value judgements about taxpayer resources.”

The final version of the bill combines the existing corporate income tax relief report with the major business facilities tax credit report and includes additional information in the report about the size and distribution of certain tax benefits.  It also requires that the report be made available to the public online and be provided to all legislators, not just those serving on the Appropriations and Finance committees.

“Our goal going in was a comprehensive annual report on all tax benefits of any kind, so legislators have the information necessary to make balanced and informed budget decisions during these difficult times,” said Englin.  “Unfortunately, staff resources at the Department of Taxation are very limited, so we amended the legislation to take a first step toward more transparency.”

The bill passed the House of Delegates unanimously on Feb. 16, and the Senate amended it and passed it unanimously Thursday.  The House voted unanimously Monday to accept the Senate amendments, which was the final passage of the bill.

Delegate David Englin is Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and is serving his third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represents the 45th District, which includes parts of the City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington County.  He serves on the Finance Committee, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee, and the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee.

Richmond

“To protect public safety, our community needs the tools to recruit and retain the very best public safety professionals,” said Englin.  “In Virginia, local governments have only the powers the General Assembly grants to them, so this is a necessary and important bill to give the City of Alexandria the tools to ensure a quality public safety workforce.”

Englin sponsored the legislation at the request of the Alexandria City Council, and Chief Deputy Tony Di Cesare from the Alexandria Sheriff’s Office traveled to Richmond to testify in favor of the bill.  Currently, if Alexandria offered its deputy sheriffs the ability to retire with 25 years of service, those employees would have to accept a lower overall pension, which is a penalty other law enforcement officers do not face.  If and when City Council eventually takes advantage of this new legislation, it can offer deputy sheriffs and others the same retirement package, ensuring fair, equal, and competitive public safety compensation to recruit and retain quality public safety workers for our community.

The bill passed the House of Delegates unanimously on Feb. 16, and the Senate passed it unanimously Thursday.

Delegate David Englin is Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and is serving his third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represents the 45th District, which includes parts of the City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington County.  He serves on the Finance Committee, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee, and the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee.

“I especially appreciate the Virginia Organizing Project’s emphasis on fiscally responsible progressive tax reform as a way to prevent hundreds of millions of dollars of cuts to education and health care,” said David.

Many of the specific ideas proposed by the Virginia Organizing Project, such as eliminating the state sales tax on food and restructing Virginia’s regressive income tax stucture, are elements of David’s Middle Class and Small Business Tax Relief Act, which he continues to advocate.

“This ‘Bake Sale for the Budget’ is a creative way to draw attention to reasonable options that Governor McDonnell and House Republicans refuse even to consider, and I am happy to support this effort,” said David.

The Virginia Organizing Project plans to deliver money raised from the bake sale to Governor McDonnell for the purpose of helping address the $4.2 billion revenue shortfall.

In the face of the worst revenue crisis since the Great Depression, cuts in state money to education are inevitable, especially considering how successfully we have protected public education while we cut $7 billion over the past four years.  However, rather than making temporary cuts that can be restored when the economy improves, House Republicans seized the opportunity to institute long-term policy changes that will undermine public schools for years to come.  For example, in the guise of “flexibility” for school districts, they are lowering quality by allowing larger class sizes — even though we know that small classes produce better outcomes.  Rather than merely reduce funds for preschool, early reading intervention, and services for at-risk children, they have lumped these services into a lottery-funded block grant and then changed the distribution formula to literally take money away from poor students and give it to students who aren’t poor.  (Our community, which has a high proportion of low-income students, loses millions of dollars under this scheme.)  Rather than build the education budget on solid accounting, they built the education budget on a foundation of sand, giving local governments the authority to increase what teachers pay toward their retirement benefits, assuming every local government will extract the maximum amount possible from those teachers, and then folding that fantasy figure into the state budget calculus.  Any education cuts should be temporary, they should not compromise quality in the classroom (and certainly not permanently), they should not be on the backs of poor and at-risk students, and they should be based on real numbers.

House Republicans have railed against the federal government all session, passing bills to assert “states’ rights” over everything from health care to commerce to the manufacture of firearms.  Imagine our surprise when they included in the House budget language to spend Medicaid funds that Congress has not yet even approved.  However, in another fiscally obtuse move that might have been prevented with Democratic input, they specifically redirect any new federal Medicaid enhancement money (which they hope and assume Congress will pass) from health care for the neediest Virginians to non-health care programs, foregoing the corresponding federal matching funds.   Therefore, rather than cutting just $370 million from Medicaid, they are choosing to leave on the table $730 million of federal matching funds, producing an overall cut of $1.1 billion.

Another area of deep concern is the high-risk plan to postpone state contributions to the Virginia Retirement System.  The Pew Center on the States recently released a comprehensive report on state pension liabilities, and it noted that Virginia is already paying slightly less into our pension trust fund than is actuarially prudent to ensure we can meet all of our future obligations.  According to the director of the Virginia Retirement System, if all goes well and the economy improves — and if we don’t make a habit of skipping these payments — Virginia’s pension trust fund should eventually grow enough so we can still meet our future obligations.  But what if the economy slips again or if growth does not meet expectations?   Failing to fully fund our pension trust fund could find us shortchanging teachers, fire fighters, law enforcement officers, and state and local employees of the benefits they have earned.  While temporarily postponing state contributions to the Virginia Retirement System may be a fast and easy (and, I fear, addictive) way to come up with $800 million to help balance the budget, it is too great a risk to our future financial stability.

Massive cuts to public education and health care and raiding the state pension trust fund will result in tens of thousands of lost jobs, hinder our economic recovery, threaten our triple-A bond rating, and diminish our coveted rankings by independent groups as best state for business, best state to raise a child, and best managed state.  These are a mere taste of the reasons I voted against the House budget last week, but I remain hopeful that House and Senate negotiators will eventually produce a budget we can all support.  In the meantime, sign up for my email list at www.davidenglin.org to stay apprised.  As always, I welcome your ideas and your feedback at 703-549-3203 or DelDEnglin@house.virginia.gov.  Thank you for the opportunity to serve.

The following is the text of David’s remarks:

Mr. Speaker, ladies and gentlemen, every once in a while, I’m reminded that perhaps the world is not as random as it may seem. It so happens that on the very day the Clerk’s office scheduled me to invite a rabbi to deliver the opening prayer, a group of so-called Christians have traveled to Richmond from Kansas, and at this very moment they are picketing the Virginia Holocaust Museum with a message of unvarnished anti-Jewish hatred. This is the same group that targets and disrupts the funerals of fallen American servicemembers and who later today will picket Hermitage High School in Henrico to intimidate its gay and lesbian students. Moments ago, while we were standing in this chamber listening to Rabbi Kranz offer words of blessing, the thugs of the Westboro Baptist Church were targeting one of Virginia’s symbols of hope and tolerance with a message of violent hate.

Thank you Mr. Speaker.

“I’m honored to stand with VOICE to protect vulnerable citizens,” said David.  “I’m proud of the synagogues, churches, mosques, and temples who have joined together to remind legislators that budgets are moral documents that determine whom we lift up and whom we leave out as a Commonwealth.  Together, we must be a voice for those in need during these difficult economic times.”

For more information about VOICE, click here.

While I have worked successfully with Republicans this year on bipartisan economic development proposals (especially my Renewable Energy Job Creation Tax Credit, which passed the House last week after being co-opted and renamed the Green Jobs Tax Credit) it is generally more efficient to preserve existing jobs than create new ones.  Therefore, I was disappointed to learn that, at the same time we have been working together on proposals we hope will create jobs over the next year to five years, House Republicans have crafted a job-killing budget.  If their proposed cuts to public education and Medicaid actually pass, tens of thousands of teachers and health care workers will lose their jobs.  This will undermine both our public schools and our health care system, and it will erase any net job growth resulting from our other economic development efforts. While we must invest in economic development, we cannot do so at the expense of cutting jobs that already exist.

Aside from the obvious toll on the families of people who are let go, unemployed teachers and health care workers mean fewer customers for local businesses, less economic activity, and slower economic recovery and growth.  Inova Health Systems is the largest private employer in Northern Virginia, and Inova Alexandria Hospital is the largest private employer in Alexandria, so this has the potential to harm both access to care (Inova Alexandria Hospital may have to cut pediatric services) and our local economy as a whole.  Moreover, undermining public education is bad for business, since companies locate and remain in Northern Virginia because of good quality of life and a strong education system that gives their employees’ children excellent opportunities and provides a quality workforce for the future.

While these proposed cuts are bad for communities across Virginia, some additional cuts would fall disproportionately on Alexandria and Arlington.  Included in the proposed cuts to education is a plan to restructure the additional money Northern Virginia localities receive to recruit and retain teachers given our area’s high cost of living.  Alexandria and Arlington already receive just 20 cents on the dollar in direct education money from the state, so by diverting some of our “cost to compete” funds to hold certain other localities harmless during this year’s education aid re-benchmarking, we would lose even more.  Under the House Republican budget, Alexandria would lose $575,512, and Arlington would lose $958,038.  Worse still, they propose changing the way lottery proceeds are distributed, so that a program designed to help poor students would be allocated based not on the number of poor students but on the number of overall students in a locality.  That restructuring would cost Alexandria nearly $2.5 million and Arlington more than $1.2 million.  In an additional blow to our community, where institutions like the Torpedo Factory, the Del Ray Artisans, and Signature Theater demonstrate that the arts are part of our economic vigor, House Republicans propose eliminating the Virginia Commission for the Arts, despite the fact that the commission returns seven dollars of economic activity for every dollar of state investment.

Needless to say, I expect to vote against the House budget, and I am working hard with Senate Democrats to negotiate better ways to close the budget gap when the House and Senate budgets go to conference.  We must all brace for the most difficult cuts in decades, but we must make smart cuts that share the burden among localities and avoid killing jobs and undermining our future economic success.

Richmond

In a year where economic development — and especially job creation — has been a paramount concern in the General Assembly, I believe it is economically shortsighted for the House to pass a budget that will completely eliminate funding for an activity that is currently returning $7 in investment by private citizens, businesses, and local governments for every one dollar of state money invested.  The Virginia Commission for the Arts has a proven track record in economic development and has helped revitalize local economies across the Commonwealth.  In the 45th District, the Torpedo Factory Art Center, the Art League, MetroStage, Signature Theater, Del Ray Artisans, Mount Vernon Community Children’s Theater and numerous other arts organizations and programs supported by the Commission over the years have strengthened our economy and enhanced our community as a tourism destination, creating jobs and contributing to tax revenues that support core services like education, health care, and public safety.  Moreover, House Republicans have found room in their budget for investments of similar scale in movie industry incentives, despite the fact that the conservative Tax Foundation’s recent comprehensive study of these incentives call into question any purported return on that investment.  By eliminating the already modest investment in a proven economic driver in favor of a similar investment whose returns are questionable and speculative, the House Republican budget is advocating a risky fiscal scheme that I oppose.

This is not the only or even the most shortsighted, high-risk scheme contained in the House Republican budget.  For example, massive cuts to public education and health care and raiding the state pension trust fund will result in tens of thousands of lost jobs, hinder our economic recovery, threaten our triple A bond rating, and diminish our coveted rankings by independent groups as best state for business, best state to raise a child, and best managed state.  However, given the importance of the arts to the economy of the 45th District, this is an additional particular concern that I will continue working to address as the budget process moves forward.

Delegate David Englin is Vice Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and is serving his third term in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he represents the 45th District, which includes parts of the City of Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Arlington County.  He serves on the Finance Committee, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee, and the Agriculture, Chesapeake, and Natural Resources Committee.