NEWS: Ready to Work; Reality Awaits
Joshua Cole, Nicole Cole, and Stacey Carroll are three Democrats representing our area in the General Assembly. On Wednesday night they talked bills, policies, aspirations, and financial realities.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Three of the delegates who will make up the 64-member majority for Democrats when the General Assembly gavels in later this month were in Fredericksburg Wednesday night to talk about what they hope to accomplish in tones that bounced between aspirational and pragmatic.
The event, sponsored by the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, was broadly focused on affordability. Del. Joshua Cole (HD-65) started the evening by saying he’s focused on “affordability across the board,” meaning everything from housing costs and insurance, to food and utilities. Del.-elect Stacey Carroll (HD-64) was even more succinct. My focus, she said, is “bills, bills, bills.”
Cole asked constituents for their help in making the case to address these issues by calling on people to provide proof of elevated utility bills and health insurance costs that they can bring before the General Assembly.
Of the affordability issues, however, housing received considerable attention.
Del.-elect Nicole Cole (HD-66) mentioned two fronts in particular on which she would like to see legislative action. The first is introducing “rent stabilization” to Virginia. Speaking with the Advance after the session, Nicole Cole said that a rent stabilization program would provide “greater housing stability and improve affordability for individuals and families, protecting tenants from potentially arbitrary and unmanageable rent increases.”
The second is lifting zoning restrictions for manufactured homes so that people can more easily take advantage of these homes that are often considerably less expensive than traditional homes constructed of wood.
Joshua Cole will again push for first-time home-buyers grants to people with the costs associated with getting into a house. He will also again push to allow faith-based communities to bypass zoning on property they own and want to build housing on. Finally, he would like to see localities zone land for affordable units.
Data Centers/Energy
Beyond housing, energy and data centers were points of considerable discussion.
Referencing rising utility costs for residents, Joshua Cole proposed protecting people who are on budget billing plans from facing those increased rates. “These are the people most hurt,” Cole said, by these jumps in costs.
When it comes to data centers, Carroll captured the tension that is often ignored or overlooked.
“I like my [phone]” she said, and the speedy response it provides when she uses it. But, she continued, “I am mindful of the infrastructure” that makes this technology possible.
Acknowledging that data centers are a reality, and that they are now critical infrastructure, the delegates directed their remarks away from slowing data center growth and toward creating minimum state standards that all projects would need to meet.
It’s a move that Nicole Cole said after the event would streamline the work localities would have to do when presented with a project knowing it had already been cleared by the state to ensure it meet goals for impacts on water, energy use, and income coming back to the locality.
Carroll spoke of how data center revenues could help with the issue of affordable housing. The windfall from data centers, she said, could be applied to the housing challenge to lower costs for people who are struggling to get into the housing market.
Energized
Where the delegates appeared most bold and confident was in the area of reproductive rights. Joshua Cole spoke confidently that this would be the year that the General Assembly would finally be able to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution, now that Gov. Younkin will no longer be able to stand in the way.
“We can debate all day if reproductive rights is health care,” Joshua Cole said, “but it’s health care,” stressing that the state should not be coming between a woman and her doctor.
At the end of the event, events in Minneapolis earlier on Wednesday, in which a U.S. citizen was shot and killed by an ICE agent, were raised. Asked what, if anything, they can do in the face of federal actions on immigration, Josh Cole said that they will work to “put in protections and buffers” to protect Virginia citizens.
An immediate action Virginians can count on, he said, was Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger ending the 287-G program “on Day One.” Agreed to by Gov. Youngkin, the program allows state and local law officers to partner with ICE on immigration activities.
Financial Challenges
Following the event, the Advance asked Joshua Cole how the Democrats’ agenda will fare at a time when federal cuts to Medicaid, rollback of ACA subsidies, child care funding cuts, and more will put pressure on the state to backfill the loss.
He said that the Appropriations Committee has been working on this challenge for nearly a year and that the chair has made clear that the surpluses the state has recently carried that allowed for spending on pet projects is likely not going to be there this session.
What that means for proposals to create more affordable housing, address prescription drug costs, and help lower energy costs will merit watching.
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