State Sen. Tommy Norment (R-3) made some predictions Thursday about this year’s General Assembly session to a room packed full of local business leaders: Medicaid won’t be expanded, the recent gasoline tax increase is here to stay and so is the car tax.
The six-term senator also said the General Assembly is unlikely to reinstate the one-handgun-a-month purchase limit and that funding for K-12 and higher education is likely to be spared in the coming round of budget cuts.
Norment’s remarks came during the Greater Williamsburg Chamber & Tourism Alliance’s annual Pre-General Assembly Forum.
The Republican Senate Majority Leader joined the rest of the Historic Triangle’s delegation — Sen. John Miller (D-1) and Dels. Monty Mason (D-93) and Brenda Pogge (R-96) — in addressing Alliance members at Thursday’s forum.
The four legislators will be in Richmond starting Wednesday for the 2015 General Assembly session. In addition to considering bills, they will be tasked with shoring up the state budget to the tune of more than $300 million. That figure represents the remainder of a more than $2.4 billion budget shortfall legislators began addressing last year.
Miller and Mason, the two Democrats on the forum, both encouraged the expansion of Medicaid as a means of injecting new money into the state’s budget. Expanding Medicaid as prescribed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — more commonly known as Obamacare — would add federal dollars to the state’s budget to open Medicaid to more Virginians.
“[Expanding Medicaid and accepting the federal money would bring] about $300 million to trade off federal for state dollars,” Miller said. “It makes no sense to me when we’re cutting mental health services and public safety to have $300 million we’re not going to touch.”
Mason said an expansion of Medicaid would help seasonal and part-time workers, which he called the “backbone” of the economy in the Historic Triangle and Newport News.
Expansion of Medicaid proved to be the defining issue of last year’s stalled budget negotiations, which pushed the state government to the brink of shutdown when Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Democrats in the Senate of Virginia insisted a budget include the expansion while Republicans in the House of Delegates opposed such a measure.
With less than a month to spare, the two sides approved a budget lacking the expansion.
Norment said a “solid, cohesive majority” of Republicans in the House of Delegates will again prevent an expansion of Medicaid from making it into the budget. Pogge, who has made numerous comments in the past against expansion of Medicaid, said Thursday she continues to oppose the measure.
“Once we pass this, it is a commitment that will be borne by all the taxpayers,” she said. “It’s not something that you can easily say ‘OK, stop the trains.’ A lot of people at that point will be on the Medicaid rolls.”
The forum also discussed education spending at length, with all four legislators affirming their support for the so-called “King’s Dominion Law,” an existing state law that requires schools to start after Labor Day.
Mason said an effort to nix the law so schools can open before Labor Day is coming and that the sentiment “gets stronger each year” in the General Assembly.
“I know that I and those of us in this delegation will work hard to continue to maintain our ability to open after Labor Day,” he said.
Norment echoed Mason’s remarks, warning of a “continuing erosion” of support for that law in the General Assembly.
“At some point we’re going to have to deal with that reality,” he told the room, which contained leaders from major tourist attractions throughout the Historic Triangle.
Miller said he thinks the state should allow for failing schools to open before Labor Day if it could help those schools to turn around. He said he voted against such a measure last year because of a commitment he made during the 2014 Pre-General Assembly Forum, but that now “it makes sense to me that if we have a failing school we give them every opportunity to succeed.”
The four legislators were asked how they would rein in increasing college and university costs, an issue forum Moderator Susan Gaston said is putting secondary education increasingly out of reach for Virginia students.
Norment said public colleges need to expand their pool of financial aid and that spending for some auxiliary programs has grown too high.
“When I look at what’s being paid on a per student basis to subsidize intercollegiate athletics, I am appalled,” he said. “There are some colleges and universities with a third-tier athletic program that are paying over $1,700 a year per student to fund college athletics.”
Miller endorsed increasing spending on higher education, which he said is underfunded by about $1 billion per year. Pogge said subsidies like government loans are driving up costs.
“Colleges are growing and getting more elaborate, and the taxpayers are paying for it with student loans that are not being repaid,” she said.
Mason said the General Assembly needs to be careful in how it tries to tackle rising costs, noting that even slight tweaks to laws can have major implications. For example, he said, adjusting the percentage of students required to be from Virginia at a state school costs that institution $3 million in revenue.
“We could fill the entire incoming class at William & Mary from Fairfax County next year,” he said, “but we have to be careful how we mandate.”
Mason said a diverse student body is an important component of institutions like William & Mary.
Gaston directed a question at Mason about how colleges and universities should respond to the allegations raised in last year’s Rolling Stone article that discussed sexual assault at the University of Virginia.
The freshman delegate said “there is nobody in this room who doesn’t want to make sure every student is protected” but the General Assembly needs to be “extremely careful about how we deal with this legislatively.”
When the panel moved to transportation issues, Mason and Miller expressed support for widening Interstate 64.
Norment serves on the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization, a regional group with authority to prioritize major transportation projects. He said it is “very difficult” to get anything done in the HRTPO because there are interests from throughout the region competing for projects.
HRTPO prioritized widening I-64 last year, a move that paved the way for the eventual awarding of funding for the first phase of the project, which adds a lane in each direction from Jefferson Avenue (Exit 255) to near Lee Hall (Exit 247). He said the group is making “significant progress” on the second phase of widening, which would add a lane from where phase one ends to the Route 199 interchange near Water Country USA (Exit 242).
None of the audience members raised their hands when asked by Mason if they took mass transit to attend the forum. He said promoting mass transit options — such as high-capacity buses linking the Historic Triangle to Newport News — is important for the business community.
The forum was held at the Fort Magruder Inn & Conference Center on Pocahontas Trail.
