Weekly Column: Major Bills From 2019 Session

The following is my column that will appear in the Mt. Vernon Gazette, Springfield Connection, The Prince William Times, The Fort Hunt Herald, and Potomac Local in the week of March 26, 2019.

The 2019 General Assembly Session ended on February 28.  In the last two columns I covered my personal legislative agenda and the state budget.  In this column, I will highlight some other important bills that passed.  

We enacted two significant economic development packages.  While I am generally skeptical of using taxpayer dollars for economic development incentives such as movie production tax credits, I am supportive to projects that can generate long-term jobs.  

The Amazon project is projected to create between 25,000 and 37,500 jobs with average wages of $150,000 or more.  The Commonwealth has committed to fund $22,000 per job for the first 25,000 jobs and $15,564 per job for the second 12,500 jobs after they are created. Tax revenue will pay for each commitment within a few years of creation and will have a 6:1 lifetime return on investment for taxpayers over $1.2 billion of new tax revenue overall.  The Commonwealth has also committed to $295 million of transportation investments into Metro, National Airport, and U.S. 1 which will make the community truly multimodal.  Virginia Tech has also committed to build a $1 billion Innovation Campus next door. 

Comment on Route 1 Widening in Fairfax County

Next week, VDOT will host public information sessions on the future of U.S. 1 widening in Fairfax County. This is your opportunity to learn about the project and make your voice heard before the final design is established. The event will be at Mount Vernon High School from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on March 26.

I am collecting comments and will share them with VDOT. Please complete my survey here: http://bit.ly/Rt1CommentForm

Weekly Column: 2019 State Budget Misses Opportunities

The following is my column that will appear in the Mt. Vernon Gazette, Springfield Connection, The Prince William Times, The Fort Hunt Herald, and Potomac Local in the week of March 19, 2019.

The 2019 General Assembly session adjourned on February 24 after a few hiccups.  Two weeks ago, I discussed the legislation that I passed.  In this column, I will explain various budget actions we took. 

First, unlike the Federal Government, our budget is balanced as required by the Constitution of Virginia. Next, the General Assembly needed to address modifications to our tax code to bring it up to speed with changes made by Congress with the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2018.  This is usually labelled “conformity.”  “Straight conformity” would cause an additional $600 million of state revenue largely due to the interplay between the new increased federal standard deduction and the $10,000 cap on state and local taxes and mortgage interest (“SALT”).