Last week the General Assembly reconvened for a Special Session, passed a state budget and attempted to ensure that Governor McAuliffe would have no possible option of expanding Medicaid without securing full legislative concurrence.

“How administrators killed a Fairfax school’s math success.” This was the headline over Jay Matthew’s Education column in Monday’s Washington Post.

Edmund Burke, an 18th century British Member of Parliament who supported the American Revolution, is famous for his observation that “the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” It is sadly ironic that this observation – from the “patron saint” of modern conservatives […]

Entering the final week of my fifth session of the House of Delegates, I am concerned that partisan politics is about to inflict lasting harm on citizens of the Commonwealth. The Republican majority in the House has made it abundantly clear that there is no room for compromise on the […]

The 2014 session of the Virginia General Assembly is in full bloom. Pardon the botanical metaphor, but the abundant flowering that emerges from barren desert following the first rains of the season seems germane. During the “long session” (i.e., the second year of the biennial budget) we consider thousands of […]

On Saturday, January 4, the Northern Virginia Delegation to the General Assembly convened its annual, non-partisan public hearing at the Fairfax Government Center. Most Northern Virginia elected representatives attended for at least part of this session, which ran for about five hours. More than 70 speakers pressed the delegation to […]

During the 2013 General Assembly session I introduced HB2286 requiring that school divisions report to the State Department of Education the number of broadband-connected schools and the number of computers in those schools. The purpose of this data collection is to develop a statewide picture of the capability of Virginia’s […]

In my previous column, I outlined my plan to tackle gaps in Virginia’s statutory constraints on “influence peddling” by elected politicians and government employees required to file financial disclosures. I apologize if this blunt characterization offends, but there is no doubt that influence pedaling is what the public and the […]

“You can’t trust my opponent, and here’s why” is the most universal, pervasive theme in politics, not “You can trust me, and here’s why.” If you are paying attention to the political ads in the Virginia Governor’s race, you know what I mean. Negative ads are like drugs of choice […]

For nearly three months, the tawdry spectacle of Governor Bob McDonnell’s eroding political credibility has been overshadowing the real work of governance in Richmond and diverting attention from the upcoming November election, which certain to have national ramifications. Many of my fellow Democrats have been outspoken in their criticism of […]