Local Delegates Appointed to Emergency Committee to Study Impacts to Virginia of Federal Workforce Reduction
Joshua Cole and Hillary Pugh Kent will serve on committee, which will begin its work after the General Assembly Session ends this spring.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Local delegates Joshua Cole, a Democrat, and Hillary Pugh Kent, a Republican, have been appointed to an emergency committee that will monitor the impact to Virginia of the Trump Administration’s moves to reduce the federal workforce and pause some federal funding.
Don Scott, speaker of the House of Delegates, convened the Emergency Committee on the Impacts of Federal Workforce and Funding Reductions earlier this week. Cole and Kent will serve along with 10 other delegates from around the state.
“According to data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, 144,483 federal civilian employees called Virginia home in 2024,” Scott wrote in a February 4 letter to House of Delegates Clerk G. Paul Nardo, announcing the formation of the committee. “We are proud that these workers deliver essential services that enhance the daily lives of 8.7 million Virginians and 335 million Americans. These workers support their families, pay taxes, and are a critical component of Virginia’s economy.”
Scott also noted that Virginia is “the top state in the nation for place of performance of federal contracts.”
“In 2023, total contract awards in Virginia totaled $106 billion,” he wrote. “Should the administration announce reductions in federal contracts similar to reductions in the federal civilian workforce, Virginia will see a disproportionate impact on the economy.”
Cole told the Advance on Friday that he and Scott began talking in December about how the General Assembly could respond to a reduction in the federal workforce.
In recent weeks, Cole said, his office has been fielding “a magnitude” of calls from constituents with concerns about their own job security or that of their family members and friends.
“I came back home on Tuesday for an event,” Cole said. “I went to Walmart, and I was stopped at least three times. One lady shared that she had a contract with USAID and was preparing to move to Arizona. She had a house there and was getting ready to leave, and she found out her contract was cancelled.”
Cole said what he’s hearing from constituents—and what other delegates are hearing— is “really sad and it’s really scary.”
Scott has tasked the emergency committee with “collecting data on the potential scope of workforce and funding cuts, analyzing the likely impacts of these cuts on Virginia’s economy and budget should they be partially or fully realized, inviting stakeholders across a wide-range of interests to provide their perspectives and to share potential ways to mitigate the impacts and make Virginia’s economy more resilient, and to make recommendations for how Virginia can proactively address these challenges.”
The committee will hold its first organizational meeting no later than May 1. It will complete its work by November 15 and produce a final report with recommendations for the 2026 General Assembly session no later than December 15.
Cole, who previously served on an emergency committee on rural health care, said he believes the committee will start work in March or April.
“We have to have swift action,” he said. “[Gov. Glenn Youngkin] has said that if anything happens to federal workers, we can give them jobs in Virginia, but that doesn’t include their pensions. We have to make sure that if the governor is making these promises, that we can give equitable pay.”
Cole also introduced a resolution yesterday that states opposition to “broad or indiscriminate downsizing of the federal government workforce and contractor sector that could harm Virginia families, small businesses, and local economies.” If adopted, the resolution would be shared with the governor, the president, and the Virginia Congressional delegation.
“This is just the start,” Cole said. “There’s more that I believe we can do, and I want us to be proactive, not reactive. I’m constantly having conversations with the speaker about what I’m hearing.”
“I’m hearing from people on the other side too, who are glad that the president is cutting down on wasteful spending, as they describe it,” he continued, “but my heart goes out to my neighbors who are scared because they may lose their jobs. They have housing payments, childcare, all of that, and everything is just up in the air right now.”
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