Running for a third term in office, Republican incumbent Jason Miyares is facing Democratic challenger and political newcomer Gayle Johnson to represent the 82nd District in the House of Delegates. The Virginia Beach district includes the North End, King’s Grant and Great Neck.
Last week, President Donald Trump backed the idea of federal “red flag” laws designed to keep guns away from people who may harm themselves or others. Several Virginia Republicans say they support similar measures here, bucking the party’s traditional reluctance to take up gun control measures. Del. Jason Miyares (R-Virginia Beach) proposed his red flag bill in July, when the legislature met for a special session on gun violence.
The Virginia General Assembly will reconvene next month to carve out a budget, an act that will have major impact on education in the state. The House of Delegates version of the budget, which includes Medicaid expansion, allocates more state funding per student than the Senate’s, with a salary increase taking effect July 1, 2019. Teachers in Virginia continue to make below the national average of teacher salaries.
Gov. Ralph Northam asked General Assembly budget leaders on Thursday to produce a two-year state budget by scheduled adjournment in eight days that expands Medicaid coverage for uninsured Virginians, bolsters financial reserves and invests in such priorities as public education. With the two chambers hundreds of millions of dollars apart, Northam acknowledged that funding of public services will depend on how the House of Delegates and Senate resolve their stalemate over Medicaid expansion and whether the state will realize an estimated $371 million in savings by accepting additional federal money for the program under the Affordable Care Act.
The battle of the budgets intensified on Tuesday, as the House Appropriations Committee took aim at a Senate proposal to expand services in Virginia’s Medicaid program without paying for them, rather than use additional federal money to fully expand the program for more than 300,000 uninsured Virginians under the Affordable Care Act.
In Fall 2010, Virginia Commonwealth University increased annual tuition by almost 24 percent, tacking $1,700 on to each in-state student’s bill in one fell swoop. While that jump may seem like an outlier, tuition increases have been the norm at the state’s institutions of higher education during the past decade.
Del. Jason Miyares worked several jobs in college at James Madison University and graduated in 1998 with little debt. Tuition in Virginia has increased 74 percent from 2006 to 2016, and Miyares, R-Virginia Beach, knows the times you could work your way through college are over.
The firewall against Medicaid expansion has fallen in the Virginia House of Delegates. The House Appropriations Committee on Sunday will consider a proposed two-year budget that includes extending Medicaid coverage to more than 300,000 uninsured Virginians under the Affordable Care Act and using the savings to pay for a blockbuster higher education initiative in Northern Virginia, a big infusion of cash into K-12 and early childhood programs, and a targeted expansion of raises for public employees.
The Senate finally found a way to agree on how to expand Medicaid services for up to 20,000 mentally ill, addicted, disabled and chronically ill Virginians, but without a way to pay for them. The chamber voted unanimously Tuesday to approve Senate Bill 915, proposed by Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, R-Henrico, which would expand Medicaid eligibility for people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — $16,753 a year for a single person — if they suffer from serious mental health or substance disorders or chronic diseases.
An expanded proposal to require Medicaid recipients to work or prepare themselves for employment passed the House Appropriations Committee on Friday with unanimous support as bipartisan talks accelerated over expanding health care coverage for hundreds of thousands of uninsured Virginians. All 10 Democrats on the Republican-controlled committee voted to support the rewritten proposal by Del. Jason Miyares, R-Virginia Beach, now titled the Training, Employment and Opportunity Program.