Spanberger unveils plan to make Virginia more affordable
By Brandon Jarvis
PUBLISHER OF VIRGINIA SCOPE
Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger on Thursday outlined her legislative priorities aimed at lowering costs for Virginians.
“As the next governor of Virginia, my overarching, unrelenting focus in 2026 will be making the commonwealth more affordable for our fellow Virginians,” Spanberger said. “Today, I’m proud to unveil the beginning, the first step, of these efforts — our agenda to build a more affordable Virginia.”
Spanberger and House Democrats ran mostly on making life more affordable in a campaign that netted a 15-point gubernatorial win and 13 new Democratic seats in the House of Delegates.
“Our mandate is to get things done… not to grandstand — not to gloat — to come together for a stronger, safer and importantly, more affordable Virginia,” Spanberger said Thursday morning while being flanked by Democratic leaders from the General Assembly.
Energy
Spanberger wants to increase the deployment of energy storage to lower peak prices. This would allow stored energy to be used during high-demand periods in place of peak power. The legislation would increase the targets for energy storage capacity that Appalachian Power and Dominion are required to petition the State Corporation Commission for approval to construct, acquire or procure.
Spanberger is also pushing legislation sponsored by Del. Mark Sickles and Sen. Kannan Srinivasan that would require electric utilities to expand programs that help low-income customers improve the energy efficiency of their homes.
Legislation sponsored by Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling and Sen. Mamie Locke would direct the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development to establish the Income-Qualified Energy Efficiency and Weatherization Task Force. Spanberger said this will help determine barriers to access and enrollment in the current energy efficiency programs for income-qualified energy customers and develop a plan to improve utility services and resources.
Spanberger wants to make it easier to install solar panels at a residence by making homes exempt from typical utility approval requirements. Republican Del. Delores Oates recently filed similar legislation.
The governor-elect also wants to improve forecasting of power usage to avoid overestimates that drive higher prices by ensuring the State Corporation Commission has a process to review and validate the estimated power usage of all utilities in Virginia.
And Spanberger wants to establish a process for the State Corporation Commission to measure grid utilization and use those measurements when planning future investments.
Housing
Spanberger wants to give renters more time to respond to lease terminations. Sen. Aaron Rouse and Del. Cia Price are sponsoring this legislation. It would extend the grace period from when a landlord notifies a tenant of their intention to terminate the lease to when they can file eviction proceedings from five to 14 days.
Spanberger is also pushing legislation sponsored by Sen. Jeremy McPike that would require localities to have options on the table to increase affordable housing availability in their communities.
Spanberger wants to empower localities to preserve and protect the long-term availability of affordable housing. The legislation sponsored by Del. Elizabeth Bennett Parker would give localities a primary opportunity to ensure existing affordable housing properties remain affordable.
Spanberger wants to create a revolving loan fund for the production of mixed-income housing developments. This legislation would make it easier for developers to construct affordable housing by establishing a revolving loan program that provides lower-interest loans for builders of mixed-income developments.
Spanberger also wants to expand the Virginia Eviction Reduction Program to meet demand. The VERP pilot program provides flexible financial assistance to prevent vulnerable Virginians from getting evicted.
Spanberger is proposing to leverage the commonwealth’s bonding authority to support affordable housing by making it easier to finance affordable housing projects. The plan is to amend private activity bond allocations by increasing the allocation available to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development for affordable housing projects.
Healthcare
Spanberger wants to eliminate additional fees on premiums. The legislation, sponsored by Del. Patrick Hope, would remove the sunset on the existing law that bans extra insurance charges for tobacco users.
Spanberger also wants to prevent pharmacy benefits managers from steering patients to their affiliated pharmacies and require drug rebates to be passed through to health plans or patients. She also wants to ban misleading statements, prohibit predatory clawbacks and retroactive denials to pharmacies, and set standards to ensure independent and community pharmacies are fairly reimbursed.
Spanberger is proposing a bill that would limit how often insurance companies can require patients to obtain special approval before they can receive medicines for chronic conditions like diabetes and asthma, as well as certain cancer-related care.
The governor-elect wants to realign management of the health incentives programs from the Virginia Department of Health to the Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority.
And Spanberger wants to establish a pilot program to provide targeted premium assistance specifically for individuals most likely to drop from the Marketplace due to premium hikes resulting from federal inaction.
Response
Republican House Leader Terry Kilgore agreed with Spanberger that these issues need to be addressed, but he does not support the ideas Democrats are proposing to fix them.
“The housing proposals largely focus on managing existing stock rather than increasing the supply of new homes,” Kilgore said of the Democratic proposals. “On energy, we’re concerned about policies that could saddle Virginians with tens of billions of dollars in additional costs for large-scale battery storage, costs that would ultimately be passed on to ratepayers.”
“If you don’t build enough houses, housing gets expensive,” Kilgore continued. “If you don’t produce enough energy, energy gets expensive. If demand rises faster than supply, prices go up. No legislation can repeal the law of supply and demand.”
This story originally appeared at Virginia Scope.
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