We have one week to go in this General Assembly session, and the major issue left to resolve is the budget. In December 2017, Gov. McAuliffe introduced his last budget, and both the House Appropriations Committee and the Senate Finance Committee have been working on it since then. The House budget bill is dramatically different than the Senate’s budget, largely because the House is willing to expand healthcare coverage to thousands of Virginians by accepting federal Medicaid dollars. In the House budget, the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) can apply immediately for expansion; DMAS is also directed to request a special waiver that will allow certain Medicaid recipients to receive workforce training, in hopes that able-bodied recipients may then obtain employment or provide community service. The Senate budget does not include the Medicaid expansion monies from the governor’s budget, with the result that the Senate had to cut more than $400 million from Gov. McAuliffe’s introduced budget. [Read more…]
Vote on the Utility Rate Bill
On Monday, February 26, 2018, the House passed SB 966, one of the most significant bills we considered this year, by a 65-30 margin. I voted against the bill. The bill was proposed largely in response to the so-called “Rate Freeze Bill” enacted several years ago.
As I have written previously, utilities had been “overearning” for the last several years and the bill would provide not only for refunds, but a new way by which the utilities could invest in modernizing the grid.
When the bill was first introduced, it had serious flaws, including a provision allowing the utilities to, in some cases, collect twice for the same investment. This was the so-called “double dip,” and I successfully offered an amendment on the House floor that removed it. The same amendment was placed on the Senate bill. [Read more…]
House Passes Budget with Medicaid Expansion — Awaits Senate Action
On Thursday, February 22, the House of Delegates passed perhaps the best budget I have seen come from the body in the last twelve years. The House Budget includes the following highlights: [Read more…]
Our Thoughts and Prayers Are No Longer Enough: An Update
[An update to my post from October 20, 2015.]
Nothing has changed, except that more have died in mass shootings, and the General Assembly has failed to pass any gun safety legislation.
The names of five cities and towns – San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, and now Parkland – have become shorthand for tragedy and terror, added to a list of such places that is already far too long. [Read more…]
GA Update: Crossover, Utility Rates, and Medicaid
“Crossover” is the term used to describe the date that bills in the House need to be passed and moved to the Senate for consideration, and vice versa. Any bills that were not sent to the other body by yesterday (February 13) are dead for this Session. On Monday and Tuesday, we considered a number of controversial bills, not the least of which were measures involving possible re-regulation of utility rates and new requirements for Medicaid recipients.
UTILITY RATES – Defeating The Double Dip
Citizens have been reading for months about problems with the so-called “rate freeze” bill that was passed in 2015, and the General Assembly is now trying to fix it. A straight repeal of the 2015 measure failed in both houses, leaving only HB 1558 as a possible alternative. But that bill was fundamentally flawed when first introduced; it permitted utilities to keep much of their “overearnings” and left them largely free of State Corporation Commission (SCC) oversight. While the efforts of environmental and consumer groups made the bill that was considered on the House floor on Mondayand Tuesday noticeably better, it remained seriously deficient in several categories, including provisions that would have allowed the utility companies to enhance their profits with the so-called “double count” or “double dip.” [Read more…]
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