The fight that is about to occur at the Assembly’s reconvened session on Wednesday is entirely about taxes, not about spending. An analysis of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s proposed compromise budget – done by the Democrats’ favorite financial bean counters, not by conservatives – confirms his budget comes extremely close to...
Monday was not just the near total solar eclipse in Virginia, but also the deadline for Governor Youngkin to act on the budget and the remaining bills on his desk. As our Steve Haner wrote in, Governor’s Budget Compromise Eclipses Fears of Stalemate, we are generally positive about the approximately 230 budget...
Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) is offering a compromise on the disputed state budget that gives Virginia’s Democratic legislators most of the spending they were initially demanding, especially for local schools and early childhood education. The Governor is also offering a quick path to a resolution that avoids additional months of budget...
Sitting on Governor Youngkin’s desk is a paid family and medical leave bill that would provide eight weeks of paid leave per year for most employees in the Commonwealth. The program would pay employees 80 percent of their weekly salary up to an amount equal to 80 percent of the regional...
There is a near-universal consensus among economists that increases in the minimum wage harm low-skilled workers the most. Originally designed to mimic racially discriminatory laws elsewhere, the minimum wage continues to be a means of picking certain classes and geographic locations over others. For example, the minimum wage benefits the high-cost-of-living areas in the Northeast...
In the end, it wasn’t about stopping Glenn Youngkin’s tax cuts. It was about finding a way to raise taxes. When Governor Youngkin proposed needed reforms of Virginia’s antiquated tax system by reducing individual tax rates 12 percent, broadening sales tax revenue and increasing a tax credit for low-income earners, General...
As usual, Virginia’s electricity ratepayers are caught in the middle. Either way a new lawsuit challenging Dominion Energy Virginia’s offshore wind project turns out, its residential and business customers will be on the hook financially, not the company. A coalition of public interest groups has now filed its expected lawsuit seeking to...
We have reached sine die of the 2024 General Assembly legislative session. During this session, over a thousand individual bills and a nearly 500-page biennial budget were sent to the Governor. All of this must be reviewed and acted upon by Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) before the April 17th reconvened session. There may be hundreds...
Pick any member of the General Assembly at random, stop them in the grocery store for a chat, and quiz them about the digital sales tax they approved a week ago Saturday. It will quickly become clear that most had no idea what they were voting for when they approved it. ...
The Virginia General Assembly has now jumped into the brave new world of taxing the digital economy, but the sales tax provisions it adopted in the budget conference report Saturday are not the same ones that appeared in earlier budget versions. The cabal of tax raisers in the secret final negotiation got...
