From Red Oak to Greenville, Bluefield to Orange, and Goldvein to Silver Beach, the Virginia Press Room features the voices of Virginia's press corps from every corner of Virginia. The podcast is a joint production of the Virginia Public Access Project and VPM News. Now, here's the host of the press room, Michael Pope. In the press room this week, a special inaugural edition of the podcast. We interrupt this program for a special news bullet. We're recording today from the lobby of the Commonwealth Hotel, where Pocket Aces' inauguration party is taking place. So you're going to hear that in the background. It's going to be kind of a loud podcast today, but very exciting. All right, let's get right into it today with our all-star panel of journalists from the Virginia Press Corps. First up is the Statehouse reporter for the Associated Press, Olivia Diaz. Thanks for joining us. Howdy, Michael. We are also joined by the environmental reporter for VPM News, Patrick Larson. Thanks for joining us. Hey, Michael. Thanks for having me. Rounding out our all-star panel is the politics analyst for Virginia Public Radio, who is also a scholar at the UVA Center for Politics, Jeff Shapiro. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. All right. Let's get right into it with our headlines of the week. jeff shapiro of virginia public radio you're first with us what's your headline of the week virginia's 75th governor not just any 75th governor virginia's first female chief executive abigail davis spanberger sworn in on the south portico of the jefferson designed capital you know virginia is not the first state to install a woman as governor it's about the 31st maybe the 32nd state to do so, but Virginia tends to make history at its own pace. In her inaugural address, the governor acknowledged the historic moment of her election and her installation as governor. If Glenn Youngkin departed stage right, Abigail Spanberger arrived stage center left. And there There were a number of things that the governor said clearly intended to strike a bipartisan tone, even though she will serve with a fully large D Democrat controlled General Assembly. She went through her issues, excuse me, of affordability and the various permutations thereof. But I think what really jumped out at me about this speech is Governor Spanberger, instead of waiting to be challenged by Donald Trump, seemed very much to throw down the gauntlet with the president. On immigration, I noticed she kind of took on the president on immigration. And I'm wondering, I think there was another line, too. She talked about the peaceful transfer of power. Peaceful transfer of power. Yeah, the most robust applause on the square was, and others may disagree, any remark, direct or indirect, that clearly had Donald Trump in mind. There was one particular line that I thought was somewhat delicious. She was talking about sort of this gilded administration in Washington. Clearly a very powerful, a very potent image. She was, I think, also talking about, correct me if I'm wrong, but the White House, the East Wing, she seemed to hint at that maybe. Did you guys get that or was that just me? Yeah, I think I definitely picked up on that. You know, I particularly, I thought it was pretty interesting to see her, you know, reaching out to all the different groups that were sort of passing in front of her as the parade carried on, particularly the Virginia National Guard. You know, Trump's use of state national guards, I think, has been really interesting to track over the past year. And I'm definitely curious to kind of know what's in her head about Virginia's military body. But, Olivia, one of the lines that I think generated, certainly tweaked, piqued my attention. She said, I know many of you are worried about the recklessness coming out of Washington. And she went on. You are worried about an administration that is gilding buildings while schools crumble, breaking the social safety net and sowing fear across our communities, betraying the values of who we are as Americans, the very values we celebrate here on these steps. OK, that's where I picked up on that a little bit. Interesting. Olivia Diaz, what's your headline of the week? Well, after the inaugural ceremony and the parade, the governor had signed her first 10 executive orders, and I got to bear witness to that. The orders were, by and large, not overtly political. They're about ways to make Virginia more affordable. There were a few that stood out to me. One was about former Governor Youngkin's order to instruct state law enforcement and law enforcement officials to assist ICE and assist immigration enforcement. She rescinded that order effectively, saying that state law enforcement should not be using their slim resources. I think she said something along those lines to assist federal officials in civil immigration proceedings. So I thought that was interesting. I'm curious about, you know, what are the sort of like consequences of that action, you know, in terms of the sort of leeway that local law enforcement actually has to work with the federal government? Yeah, it was definitely a controversial executive auditor from former Governor Glenn Youngkin. And I was unsure if Governor Spanberger would be doing something regarding that order, regarding immigration in general on her inauguration day. I was skeptical as to whether that would happen, but it did. And so she seems to be having a more center-left tone when it comes to immigration. But that's the tone she's setting. We'll have to see what her actions say over the course of her administration. And I think as well, given her experience as a member of Congress, as a candidate for Congress representing the changing suburbs of Virginia, suburbs that became often lopsidedly white because of white flight during the school desegregation fights. Now in places like Henrico County or Prince William County, areas that she represented in Congress, these are truly multi-hued jurisdictions. She has been very attentive of this reality from the beginning. And, you know, it doesn't hurt to speak the language. As a candidate for Congress, I remember attending any number of events in which there would be present Hispanic people, and she would drift comfortably in and out of Spanish. There's a lot to be said for communicating on those most personal levels. She will bring that to the governorship. And then in her remarks today, her remarks on Saturday, she specifically spoke of these new neighborhoods and our new neighbors. and they are welcome too. They are our friends. They are Virginians. Right, when talking about the safety of Virginia and the security of Virginia that she explicitly said in her inaugural speech, that includes immigrants as well. Olivia, I was struck by the theme of affordability on the executive orders because in the early days of the General Assembly session for those first three days, they opt for obvious reasons. The Democrats who lead the House and the Senate were focused on the constitutional amendments, none of which had anything to do with the affordability agenda, right? I mean, it was abortion rights, gay rights, voting rights, and redistricting. And so there was some criticism. Hey, Dems, you've got power now, and yet you're not doing anything for the affordability agenda. So now Spanberger is actually coming out of the gate here with some executive orders specific to affordability. Which executive orders, what is she saying with her affordability agenda in terms of the executive orders? She had an executive order about doing something akin to like a statewide audit about how could each, you know, could each department look into ways that we can make, you know, that they can make Virginia more affordable as quickly as possible. What are ideas they have, what are cuts that can be made, et cetera. There was another order regarding federal workers and making something akin to a focus group for figuring out how to support federal workers through layoffs, how to help them during this time of volatility in Washington. There was an executive order on housing development. There was an executive order on health financing. So it clearly is about the issues that are weighing on people's wallets, I think. And who knows how effective those executive orders will be. but they weren't interesting. May I throw this out? I think this campaign and certainly today's ceremony should be reminders of how nationalized our politics have become. You know, affordability is that one word that is at the center of the large D democratic lexicon. I'm just, you know, wondering how much control a governor, much less a president of the the United States has over the arc of an economy. And the other thing that I thought was interesting that Governor Youngkin didn address in his departure speech the other day and that is just how for lack of a better word reliant Virginia is on federal largesse You know a state that has the history of which includes a lot of Washington bashing because of, you know, irresponsible fiscal policies at the other end of I-95, 30% of the state's economy can be attributed to dollars flowing out of out of Washington. Patrick Larson of EPM News, you're next with us. What's your headline of the week? My headline of the week and basically every week is data centers. Yeah. So I'll just say that the governor, Governor Spanberger did not really directly address this in her speech on Saturday, but said, you know, that large energy users would have to pay their fair share of electricity costs. That was a really big issue in the 25 campaigns for some candidates in particular. It's been brought up year after year at the General Assembly. You have politicians like Senator Danica Rome from Manassas who have put forward policies on data center issues that have kind of really not gone anywhere. And so that's coming up again in a really big way. There are, I think, dozens of bills that either directly relate to data centers or relate to sort of like external factors, whether it's water use, whether it's impact on the electrical grid, whether it's air quality. Right. So just, I guess, like a little bit of background data centers are like the single largest source of economic investment in Virginia by like a pretty long shot. billions of dollars every year, tens of thousands of jobs, mostly construction, but we're building a lot of them, so they're probably not going to go away anytime soon. And, you know, they're, like I said, they're stressing the electric grid. They have an effect of driving up electric bills for smaller rate payers, whether that's residents, whether that's small businesses, because they basically, you know, change the supply demand equation on the electric grid. They push the supply closer to the available demand, which through bodies like PJM interconnection, which people actually know the name of now, causes higher bills. It means a lot more infrastructure build out and that sort of thing. So there's a few bills that I think are particularly interesting. Prince William delegate Josh Thomas has House Bill 155, which would basically put a final step on data center approvals requiring the regulators at the State Corporation Commission to take a look at, hey, can we reasonably put this thing on the grid without having a huge impact on rate payers, without threatening reliability of the electric grid? Interestingly, in a press conference last week, Senate Majority Leader Scott Surivel said he wasn't sure about that one. He wasn't sure if it would pass the House. But advocates have kind of described that to me is the Keystone Bill. I think another key issue is the state tax credit. So a January 2nd report from Virginia Tax, which was relying on self-reported data from data center operators, found that these facilities got about $1.9 billion in tax breaks in fiscal year 2025, which is the majority of tax breaks for the whole state. And wasn't that a 50% increase from the previous tax cycle? It was some spectacular leak. It was close. I think their estimate for FY24 was $1.3 billion. So it's close. Senator Cree Deeds is going to be carrying a bill about that. Again, another bill that's kind of come up in multiple versions, but has not really been able to make it out of the legislature. He wants to extend that, but with conditions on clean energy, that sort of thing. So, I mean, like I said, there are dozens of bills on this. Those are just two that I'm going to be tracking. But there is, yeah, so much to be said about this stuff. I thought it was interesting that Governor Spanberger, in her inaugural speech, in her inaugural address, mentioned data centers in terms of, yeah, we can have data centers, but they've got to pay their fair share. What did you make of that? I think that's super interesting. I think that work is already kind of underway in the state. So at the SEC last year, we saw in their review of Dominion Energy's rates, which happens, I believe, every two years. They, you know, basically got a whole new customer class for data centers. So they have a specific rate that they will have to pay that is supposed to take into account, you know, the amount of generation demand they cause, the amount of demand for new infrastructure they cause. But, you know, it's not really good enough for a lot of people in the general assembly. there was a poll a grain of salt that came from a Democratic pollster with an environmental group that is like very anti a new fossil fuel generation that found that nearly 90% of Virginia voters want or at least the respondents to this poll want their legislators to do something about these impacts I think it's time for us to do something about some Insider Info This is when our top reporters reveal the story behind the story, giving us an inside scoop on Virginia politics. Olivia Diaz of the Associated Press, you're first with us. What's your insider info? Well, there were some prominent folks at the inauguration I could talk about. Totally. Yes, Beyonce was at the inauguration. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. That'd be awesome, but no. I think I would have heard something. You would have heard me screaming. Okay. There were some governors, former governors at the inauguration. Former governors, Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, Ralph Northam, Doug Wilder, and it was his birthday. 95th birthday. Apparently, the governor is intent on outliving his enemies. didn't you have something interesting about the order in which they sit typically they are they they sit in an order that reflects the the time period they served so i noticed that bob mcdonald was seated to tim kane's left mcdonald succeeded tim kane wilder was uh sitting next to uh so not necessarily a hard and fast rule. He was sitting next to Youngkin, as I recall. And again, I know I'm not the only one who noticed this. As Terry McAuliffe, a former governor who was defeated for a second non-consecutive term by Glenn Youngkin in 2021, Youngkin extended his hand to McAuliffe. McCullough kept walking. Drama. Oof. Well, there were some other Democrats there. New Jersey's governor-elect, Mikey Sherrill, was there. And you know about the relationship that she and Governor Spanberger had. Oh, they were roomies. They were roomies. And it gets even weirder. Sherrill was born in Virginia but grew up in New Jersey. Spanberger was born in New Jersey but grew up in Virginia. The more you know. Um, also, uh, Maryland Gov, uh, Westmore. A possible presidential candidate who has campaigned for a number of Virginia candidates. Mm-hmm. And, um, I saw some, uh, senators, uh, Adam Schiff and Alyssa Spockkin. Shifty Schiff was there. And, um, Elaine Luria saw her too. Yes. Um, and there were a number of former and, uh, current members of Congress, uh, with this early burst of activity on re-redistricting, if you will. Folks like Luria Shannon-Taylor, the elected prosecutor in Henrico County, the governor's home county. She's running in the first congressional district, or what she expects will be the first congressional district with the endorsement of the governor. Patrick Larson of VPM News. What's your insider info? Well, I wanted to pick a couple of bills on an issue that I've been following since last year. It's right to repair. So this is kind of an interesting idea. It basically says, you know, if you have like a household item and it breaks down, maybe we should think about, you know, just at a society scale, trying to repair more things instead of throwing them in the landfill. Right. You know, think about your grandmother's old KitchenAid mixer that still works to this day. And if it breaks, you can just send it in to get repaired. Or, you know, your car that you take into the shop. I think, you know, it's obviously a little bit of a lower profile issue than some of these other things. But I think it's like a good, there's been some interesting community building in the city of Richmond about it over the past year. a repair cafe started doing pop-ups usually once a month, which is like just a really fun thing that usually happens on weekends where you can bring whatever you have that's broken and get it fixed by somebody who's really nice and knowledgeable. I've gotten a couple pairs of pants fixed over the past year that I messed up on my bike. So there are a couple of interesting bills on this. One is a digital right to repair bill carried by Jackie Glass, and one that's targeted at farm equipment carried by Delegate Lily Franklin. And I think, you know, I'll be curious to see how they do this year. They had to make some changes to the bills. I know that Delegate Glass's digital focused bill did not pass last year. It pretty much got left to die pretty much immediately because some of the, I guess, people who were opposed to it were not down. So yeah that something I be tracking Curious to see if this sort of new I guess new or old thing made new you could say Look at keeping things in the family, keeping things going, sort of like having that connection with your stuff, right? This makes an impact on me because I hate throwing stuff out. I mean, it really kind of bothers me. Recently, I had to get rid of a printer that was just taking up space in my office and hadn't worked in a long time. but I didn't want to get rid of it because I knew somebody who knows what they're doing can probably repair this. That person is not me, right? And it was just taking up all this space. And so eventually I got rid of it, but I felt bad about it. Yeah, and it saves you money to get things repaired. And it also saves on landfill space, which is increasingly a big issue in central Virginia and across Virginia as a whole. You look at these new landfill projects that are just in the early stages of being permitted. That type of thing takes like 10 years. So it's like we're talking about a decade of effort on the part of localities, right, who could be working on other things, you know, providing other services. But because we throw so much stuff away, we literally have to spend all this time and energy figuring out what we're going to do with all our junk when actually a lot of it is really not junk at all. As someone who's had her iPhone for the past six years, please keep me posted as to how this goes. Yes, digital right to repair. That could be right up your alley. And what about those collections that local governments often organize? You know, you can have these shredding parties and, you know, all those spent checks and bills that one no longer needs to keep around. But on the digital side, computer equipment, phones, printers, a lot of that has to be dismantled anyway before, I guess, chunks of them end up in the landfill. Well, that's what I actually ended up doing with my printer that I was talking about. The city of Alexandria has a spot where you can take electronic equipment and they will dismantle it in a way that's environmentally sound. So I thought, well, maybe the pieces are being harvested. I'm hoping somehow. All right. Jeff Shapiro, you're next with this. What's your insider info? Well, you know, I've given some thought to this. And initially I was of the view that the new governor needed to ready for a direct challenge by Donald Trump. And I'm still anticipating that there'll be something, forgive the sports metaphor, I think there was something of a brushback pitch with that lawsuit against Virginia filed after the election, alleging that Virginia's policy in law of providing tuition breaks for immigrant kids attending public colleges and universities, that this represented racial discrimination. But think about it. Richmond is a majority-minority city with an Asian mayor, the seat of government in a state that three times has comfortably rejected Donald Trump. might we see ice in significant number in Richmond? There is already evidence of an ice presence here, but wouldn't you think that Stephen Miller and Donald Trump and all those folks up there at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be looking for an opportunity to humble a Democrat at on an issue that is still very powerful with the Republican base. Certainly, yeah. I mean, I think that's kind of the playbook we've seen in all these other sort of blue states, you know, the actions in Los Angeles, what's going on in Minnesota right now. I think it's, I would not be really be surprised if, you know, sort of the Republican governor was in a way like a firewall, right? It'll be interesting to see. And I think this is just a tile in a larger mosaic. You know, Virginia has elections every year. We're going to have congressional elections in 2026 in newly configured House districts, apparently, electing a senator as well, presumably reelecting a senator who's been hypercritical of Donald Trump, Mark Warner. So these invasions, for lack of a better description, of blue cities in swingy states, I think would also have the effect of diminishing interest in and enthusiasm for participating in the voting process. Folks are going to stay home rather than cast a ballot, even if they can do it 45 days early. All right, now it's time for our game show segment, Buy, Sell, or Hold. I'll present a topic and our panelists will make a choice. Do they want to buy, sell, or hold? Our topic today, gendering Virginia. Former Governor Glenn Youngkin did this on his way out the door, repeatedly saying in his speech to a joint assembly of the General Assembly, Virginia, make her soar. Virginia is always a her in the speech. Is Virginia a she? Does she soar? Olivia Diaz of the Associated Press, you're first with this. Buy, sell, or hold on. Gendering Virginia. Well, okay, as setting the stage here, I don't think Virginia's a he. I feel very strongly about that. Remember, Virginia was named for the Virgin Queen. Yes, thank you, yes. and Virginia is also a name that people name their children. Good point. So there's that too. Virginia is also not a boat or a car or whatever. An inanimate object. Yes, like Virginia is, you know, Virginia is like the sky. You know what I mean? Like a state is like a sky. Like it's not just one thing. It's a lot of things, you know, for some people, everything. So these are the thoughts I'm wrestling with. I think I am a sell. A sell? I could be persuaded otherwise. So if there's a buy here, I would like to be persuaded. I'm sure we'll get to that later on in our panelist. Patrick. Oh, sorry. No, no, go ahead. Right. And I just think instead of calling Virginia a she, I think it's more important that, you know, the talk about women's experience in Virginia is front of mind. And so I'm navigating all these things, but happy to be persuaded. Patrick Larson of EPM News. Let's do some persuading. Buy, sell, or hold on gendering Virginia. Well, I am a buy. I don't think I have anything particularly persuasive to say about it. I just, you know, I think it's like a fine thing to do. I understand he's trying to make a sort of like rhetorical flourish. And, you know, in a way, is Virginia not the vehicle carrying all of us into our future? So true. Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's, I would, this has actually spurred some interest in me to learn more about the history of the very specific things that we seem to gender in the English language and sort of where that comes from. So, yeah, who knows? Maybe I'll be contributing an episode of ThruLine about this in the future. We'll see. Oh, preview. Deep tease to a future project. I love it. All right. Jeff Shapiro, buy, sell, or hold on gendering Virginia. Before I'm wrestling with this, but I'll offer a suggestion. Maybe given the times, we should go with a gender neutral. Can you imagine? Make them sore? Yeah, exactly. Can you imagine in a state letterhead, Commonwealth of Virginia, them? I would be down with that. And then think about this. In recent years, certainly in the past almost 20 years, particularly among conservative Republican politicians, most notably Ken Cuccinelli, the attorney general, Wirtu, the woman featured on the state shield, is bare-breasted, traditionally bare-breasted. That was a little too saucy for Ken Cuccinelli, and he issued his own pin for his staff and friends in which Wirtu's modesty is concealed. I should clarify, I have no issue with other people using she. I don't know if I'll incorporate it into my vernacular, but if others want to, who am I to yuck their yum, you know? Who am I to yuck their yum? Words of wisdom to live by. It's a new era in Virginia politics. It's the Spanberger era. No one's going to yuck anyone's yum. No, no, no. It's important. You know, with the Spanberger installation as governor, a woman occupying the highest office in Virginia, do not discount the significant presence of women within the legislature. The Democratic caucus in the House of Delegates, now 64 members, the majority of them are women. Right. Wait, sorry, Jeff. Are you a buy, sell, or hold? Oh, so this is actually... No, no, no, I appreciate it. And this is where I'm wondering if... I guess I would have to buy. All right. Okay. Maybe I need to do some deep thinking about my takes here. Your internalized bias. Well, that man, try this on for size. Since we have a woman as governor, maybe the state shield should be repurposed so that rather than a woman conquering a tyrant a man I think we should keep it I think it the coolest flag in the United States They'll mess with success. Well, I think part of the depiction is that the woman is an Amazon. In fact, that's why she's bare-breasted, to indicate to you, the viewer, that you're looking at an Amazon. So it doesn't work if you have a male depiction. There is no male Amazon. No, but, you know, there are certainly lots of male warriors committed to toppling tyrants. I don't think it would go very far as an idea. It's more of a thought experiment. Speaking of thought experiments, now it's time to open up our reporter's notebook. This is when our top journalists tell us what to be on the lookout for this week. Patrick Larson of EPM News. you're first with is what's in your reporter's notebook. Bills from the sewer. To be clear, the Commission on Electric Utility Regulation, also known as CURE. So this is a pretty recently revitalized body. Wait, is that how you pronounce it? I saw the acronym. There is dispute over sewer and CURE, and we'll get into this a little bit later. Oh, really? Okay, all right. So this is a recently revitalized body of elected officials, gubernatorial appointees and legislative appointees who basically oversee how the State Corporation Commission regulates electric utilities. They are obviously most interested in Dominion Energy, an Appalachian Power Company, the state's investor-owned utilities. And they spent the last year, particularly the latter part of last year, putting together a big long list of legislative legislation that they have now brought to the General Assembly. A lot of it is focused on affordability, kind of in line with the discussion we're always having now. So, you know, they're looking at things like disconnections. They want to try to get more data out there about when people are involuntarily disconnected from electric service, you know, for how long, why, what can we do about it in the future? There's been a lot of talk about balcony solar, these sort of like small portable solar panels that you can literally just attach to your balcony if you have an apartment or if you have a house that is not really you know have a good roof for solar panels or that kind of thing um and then they're also looking at like pretty high level stuff like it's going as far as you know potentially changing how we regulate our big electric utilities um so just a little bit of info on that basically dominion right now is incentivized to build things to build centralized power plants, to build big transmission lines. They get a certain percentage of profit for their investors on that stuff. They're saying, with all this solar, with all these batteries, these more distributed, potentially smaller sources, maybe we should look at different ways of incentivizing them to do certain things. And as I promised, they are looking at a name change legislation. They want to change their name to the Energy Commission of Virginia, I think specifically so that people like me can't refer to them as sewer anymore. But I think that's just too bad. I think it's a hilarious name and I wish they would keep it. Jeff Shapiro, what's in your reporter's notebook? Despite this history-making moment, a woman taking office as governor for the first time in Virginia, we are at the start of a legislative session. Typically, it is the legislature that is absorbing most of the noise, the oxygen, the color, the attention in the room. And I think that's going to happen again as Governor Spanberger begins her first full week in office. That doesn't mean the legislature won't be paying attention to her. It doesn't mean that she won't be working her will on issues. For example. We need to hear something from her more specific and current on redistricting. But the... What do we need to hear from her on redistricting? Well, for example, is she interested in this 9-2 scheme that Tim Kaine has supported? Reporting by a former colleague at the Times-Dispatch, Anna Bryson indicates that the governor, as governor-elect, thought 9-2 was probably a little easier to swallow than 10-1. But it's not a bad opportunity, I think, for a new governor. Let the legislature kind of dominate the press coverage while this governor, she, gets her feet on the ground. And closing out our podcast with a strong finish, Olivia Diaz of the Associated Press, what's in your reporter's notebook? Well, Michael, you brought up earlier that this past week was really about the constitutional amendments, abortion, voting rights, and voting rights restoration, marriage equality, and redistricting. It seems as though Democrats kind of wanted to knock those out. And now it has kind of set the table for what's next, which is affordability. I'm interested to see what bills get through committee and what bills are left on the table to wither away and die. I'm wondering, you know, after the election last year, at a press conference, Speaker Don Scott spoke a lot about restraint. Democrats got 13 seats in the House. They need to show restraint. They needed to govern and get things done. I'm wondering now that Democrats, now that they really have power, what they intend to do. And if we'll actually see restraint or if we'll see, you know, Democrats living out, you know, doing what they want to do on a more progressive standpoint. So that is what I'm really interested in at this point. You know, I think it's interesting with the affordability agenda that it's all over the map. I mean, it's everything from affordable housing and expanding homeownership to utility bills and even contraception. I mean, you think about libs living out. I mean, talking about contraception as the part of the affordability agenda might strike some people as, is this really restraint? I mean, you know, it's like, But this is the part that I think is really interesting about the affordability agenda is that it has the potential to be so expansive and all encompassing. Right. And I think, you know, on the contraception point, I'd be interested to see, you know, the cost associated with that. You know, if that's low hanging, it sounds like that might be low hanging fruit, right? Like a minimal cost program potentially, though I have not seen that myself and could be wrong. But also what what are the places that Virginians are hurting most? It is expansive. Housing, cost of goods, their electric bills. There are so many different ways that people talk about the ways that they're hurting. I think it kind of has to run the gamut in terms of how they tackle this. And I guess the budget is potentially a big factor here too. I mean, in affordability discussions on sewer, it was over and over again brought up, this is a tight budget year. You know, we don't really have room for new programs. Do you see that being a big sort of stumbling block for some of this agenda? Do I think we're going to get $200 tax rebates in the mail? No, I have not been. That has not come up. But do I think the budget seems to be this, what I've been told, I did an interview with now Governor Spanberger before she was inaugurated. And she spoke about this year being looking okay, But they got a plan for the year after and the year after that when some of the cuts from D.C. really do start to take an effect and trickle in and hurt. So we'll see what that looks like. Well, there are several elements to the budget that, and it's procedure and process, but both are really important. the budget that's before the assembly is a final gift from Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, to a legislature now fully dominated by Democrats. Typically, that budget is not one that is fully and completely rewritten. There's a lot of tinkering around the edges. um mark sickles the governor's pick for uh secretary of finance a ranking democrat on the house appropriations committee i think that was an enormously effective selection someone who gets along with democrats and republicans who really is intimately familiar with the budgeting process with where the money originates and whether it's going to even be there So I wouldn't expect a great deal in the way of significant changes to the budget. And as you point out, Olivia, there are shoes that have yet to drop, largely because of federal tax policy. Stay tuned to the Virginia Press Room podcast because the shoes will be dropping. This is the Press Room. We're busy. that's it for this episode of the virginia press room a joint production of the virginia public access project and vpm news if you enjoyed the show please consider supporting vpap and supporting vpm hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcasting app and hey write a review on apple podcasts it really helps people find the show all right we'll be back next week for the next episode of the virginia press room i'm danny noakes and here's a look at some exciting things happening at This month, VPM is excited to expand its When Then 90 by 5 Children's Education Initiative into the Charlottesville region. A collaboration with the Robbins Foundation and Thrive Birth to 5, the 90 by 5 initiative provides parents and caregivers who have children under the age of 5 with resources that encourage positive daily interactions to influence future learning. Learn more at vpm.org. VPM. Amen.
