Virginia
How Gov. Spanberger Betrayed Virginia’s Workers – The American Prospect
Exactly one year and six days ago, the Prospect posted a piece I’d just written about Colorado’s Jared Polis, under the headline “The Democrats’ One and Only Union-Busting Governor.”
As of a couple weeks ago, that headline is no longer accurate. Polis is still a union-buster and even more out of sync with Colorado Democrats, who’ve just formally censured him for complying with President Trump’s demand to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, the county clerk who’d been convicted for enabling a Trump acolyte to illegally access and copy the hard drives from her county’s voting machines in an effort to prove that Trump had actually won the 2020 election.
More from Harold Meyerson
But Polis no longer holds that “one and only” status when it comes to Democratic governors who bust unions. Two weeks ago, Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger did just that by vetoing a bill that would have given Virginia’s public-sector workers the right to bargain collectively.
The parallels with Polis are almost uncanny. In Colorado, every Democrat in each house of the legislature had voted for a bill that would have ended the state’s somewhat anomalous “right-to-work” status. (Colorado’s law, dating from 1943, says that once a union wins majority support in a recognition election, it then has to win 75 percent support in a second election to be permitted to collect dues from members.) Every Republican voted against. Siding with the Republicans, Polis vetoed the bill.
In Virginia, state employees have no right to bargain collectively, while municipal employees have had that right since 2021, but only in cities that grant them those rights (which number roughly a dozen). Like Colorado’s “right-to-work” law, Virginia’s ban dates from the 1940s—but unlike Colorado, at that point Virginia was still under the thumb of Jim Crow white supremacist rule. The ban was explicitly racist, motivated by the prospect of a racially integrated union at one public hospital. This spring’s vote on the bill to grant public employees the right to unionize and bargain also split, like Colorado’s, exactly on party lines, with 61 House Democrats voting yes and 35 Republicans voting no, with no crossovers, while in the Senate, the tally was 20 Democrats voting yes and 18 Republicans voting no, again with no crossovers. And like Polis, Spanberger sided with the Republicans and vetoed the bill.
Spanberger insists she’s OK with collective bargaining in theory, just not in practice. To those ends, she sought to have the bill amended. Where the legislature’s bill required government agencies to bargain with their workers’ union once a majority of workers had voted to certify that union as their representative, Spanberger’s amendment merely permitted government agencies to bargain if they so chose, and unlike the legislature’s bill, her amendments also didn’t require even those government agencies that opted to grant workers bargaining rights to bargain over wages and working conditions. Her amendments also specifically denied bargaining rights to workers at the state’s Port Authority and its universities (faculty, staff, teaching and research assistants, as well as university hospital staff) and delayed applying the law to local governments until January 1, 2030—the day that Spanberger will be termed out of office.
In addition to the amendments she formally proposed, sources tell me that she also floated another one that would have required unions to win a majority of the votes of all the workers in the agency they sought to unionize, not just a majority of those who voted. That this is the substance of a new Florida law enacted at the insistence of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis apparently didn’t keep Spanberger’s people from testing this out with some Democratic legislators, who instantly shot it down. Nor were her people embarrassed by the fact that, like almost all American elected officials, Spanberger had won office with the backing of nowhere near a majority of all voting-age constituents. (The population of voting-age Virginians is roughly 6,930,000; when Spanberger was elected last November—with enough votes to defeat her opponent by a robust 15 percentage points—she won 1,976,857 votes, or just 28.5 percent of the total number of voting-age Virginians.)
Virginia’s Democratic legislators refused to include Spanberger’s amendments in the bill, since they clearly understood those amendments would effectively negate just about everything their bill would do. On May 14, Spanberger vetoed the bill, stunning not just the legislators but the union members who’d campaigned for her just six months before—not least because she promised first responders that she would support such a bill during the campaign.
To be sure, Spanberger has signed other pro-worker legislation since she took office in January. That includes a raise in the state’s minimum wage and the establishment of paid family leave. What apparently crosses the line for her, as it does for Polis, who also governs a state that boasts a number of worker benefits, is worker power: the ability of workers to advocate for themselves without fear of being penalized for it, much less being found in violation of the law for doing so.
Exactly who Spanberger is trying to ingratiate herself with by her veto is somewhat mysterious. A 2020 poll of Virginia voters found that they favored granting collective-bargaining rights to public employes by a 68 percent to 25 percent margin. A number of recent nationwide polls have found unions’ approval ratings at their highest level—roughly 65 to 70 percent—since the 1960s. Our corporate behemoths, as well as smaller business, remain fanatically opposed to unions, as do such corporate shills as Jeff Bezos’s mouthpieces recently inflicted on the readers of The Washington Post’s editorial pages—who’ve applauded Spanberger’s opposition to worker power.
Spanberger is perfectly free to curry the support of Bezos’s sock puppets, of course. But at a time when virtually every Democratic official insists that the party focus on rebuilding its ties to the working class, the kind of opposition to worker power that Polis and now Spanberger have demonstrated should completely disqualify them both from any higher office, at least on the Democratic ticket. Democrats who walked precincts for Spanberger last year, only to discover that she’s well to the right of Josh Hawley on the question of their rights as workers, should walk away—make that, run away—from her now.
Many attending the meeting expressed disappointment in some Virginia politicians, including Gov. Abigail Spanberger, for pushing to renew tax breaks for the multibillion-dollar corporations behind the centers.
Community activists, elected leaders and residents of Northern Virginia got together Sunday night to share their concerns about the proliferation of data centers across the region.
Many of the approximately 120 people attending the meeting at the Best Western hotel on Balls Ford Road in Manassas expressed disappointment in some Virginia politicians, including Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who have pushed to renew tax breaks for the multibillion-dollar corporations behind the centers. Another major concern for those in the crowd was the centers’ impact on the environment.
State Sen. Danica Roem opened the meeting by telling those in attendance that she and two other state senators there, L. Louise Lucas and Russet Perry, wanted to hear from them and that they shared their concerns about the prospect of adding more data centers.
“It is time to stop the reckless data center sprawl,” said Roem as she invited members of the public to speak.
Tony Hernandez drove to the meeting from Spotsylvania County, where three data centers are already up and running and companies like Amazon and Powerhouse 95 are working to build 17 more active data center sites.
“This is a bigger problem than just the companies who are invading our state. … This is a failure of government,” Hernandez said, becoming emotional when discussing data centers’ impact on his community. Those effects include more noise and air pollution.
“Your plans didn’t take into consideration the people who you were supposed to serve,” he said. “I know about service. I served. My son serves now in the United States Navy. We serve.”
Studies have shown data centers’ massive environmental impacts: A single large facility can consume millions of gallons of water each day for cooling. Their demand for a constant supply of electricity places significant pressure on local power grids, increasing carbon emissions and driving up utility costs for the communities around them.
“Technology’s not bad,” said Sen. Lucas. “We’ve all benefited from technology. What is bad is our government has not done a good job of managing its impact,” she said.
The Virginia legislature remains at an impasse over the state budget, and the exemptions have emerged as a key point of contention. Spanberger has argued that reneging on existing agreements could undermine Virginia’s reputation as a reliable place to do business.
Lawmakers in both chambers are working to reach a budget agreement before the end-of-month deadline to avert a government shutdown, but the dispute over data center tax incentives remains the biggest obstacle to a deal.
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RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger said she supports the House of Delegates’ proposed budget as state lawmakers race to avoid a government shutdown before the July 1 deadline.
Legislators are set to meet Tuesday to review their proposed budgets, and the House could vote as early as Thursday. But a major obstacle remains: the Senate Finance chair is insisting that a billion-dollar sales and use tax exemption for data center operators must end — a position that puts the Senate at odds with the House proposal.
The governor said her team has not had a substantive discussion on what Sen. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) might present as a counter proposal. On Friday, Lucas posted a graduated tax proposal for data centers on social media but has not presented that plan to the governor’s team.
As recently as Sunday, Lucas was adamant that the companies behind the data centers would pay what she called their fair share.
“They keep saying to us, ‘well, if we don’t get that sales and use tax exemption in Virginia, we’re gonna go someplace else.’ Well, Senator Locke just laid it out for you: all the other states are saying, ‘no, we don’t want them’ and if we get them, we’re going to make sure that we modify how we do these use and sales tax exemptions,” Lucas said.
Spanberger reiterated her support for the House version of the budget.
“In the absence of any counter proposal or any additional budget language coming from the Senate, I continue to remain supportive of the House of Delegates proposed conference report, because it’s thorough, it’s thoughtful, it addresses priorities across the board,” she said.
She added that if it were brought to a vote, there is broad support for the measure.
“If it were brought to a vote, certainly there’s many members … of the state Senate whose budget priorities are also in that conference report,” she said.
The timeline is tight. While House of Delegates members return Thursday, Senate members do not convene until next Monday. Under legislative rules, an agreed-upon budget must be on legislators’ desks 48 hours before a vote can be taken. If a budget agreement is not ready by the close of business Tuesday, the House will not be voting on Thursday.
This is a developing story. Email the CBS 6 Newsroom if you have additional information to share.
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Virginia
Falls Church officials weigh order of operations for major affordable housing project | ARLnow.com
Which should come first for the Virginia Village redevelopment in Falls Church: Selecting a development partner, or considering zoning changes?
City leaders are facing a “chicken-and-egg”-type challenge as they tackle the major affordable housing initiative.
A decision will have to come soon, as city leaders hope to have an interim development agreement inked in the fall, followed by a full agreement nearly next year. At the June 8 Council meeting, officials discussed whether to prioritize zoning changes or partner selection.
Council member Arthur Agin said he believed consideration of zoning changes should come in advance of, or at the latest concurrently with, selection of a development partner.
“We shouldn’t be taking that acceptance of a developer until we’ve fully locked down the zoning,” Agin said.
City Manager Wyatt Shields said he wasn’t so sure. Shields affirmed staff’s position that an interim agreement with a development partner should come before finalizing land-use changes.
“It would be good for the public to interact with the specific plans [put forward by the developer]” before final action on potential zoning changes, Shields said. The Council could use that information to craft zoning changes for the 20-parcel Virginia Village site, he said.
The city’s Economic Development Authority (EDA) currently owns nine of the 20 lots, while the remainder are in private hands. Any zoning-overlay district for Virginia Village would apply to public and private parcels.
Council members on June 22 are expected to formally approve a request for proposal, seeking a development partner for the sites under EDA ownership. The city is expected to set a deadline sometime at the end of July for development proposals to be submitted.
City officials are seeking proposals focusing on three alternative development scenarios:
- Option 1: Rehabilitation of city-owned properties in Virginia Village with the potential for minor expansions, such as an additional floor or bump-outs of the existing buildings
- Option 2: Low-intensity redevelopment that would include razing the city’s properties and rebuilding up to four levels on the parcels
- Option 3: Larger infill redevelopment that would demolish the city-owned buildings and replace them with properties potentially up to seven stories tall in some areas
City officials also will consider hybrid proposals, combining elements of the three options.
Of the 20 fourplexes comprising Virginia Village, the city’s Economic Development Authority owns the following:
- A four-parcel strip at 2002-2004-2006-2008 Gibson Street
- A two-parcel strip at 310-312 Shirley Street
- Individual parcels at 302, 303 and 310 Maple Ave
The owner of a 10th lot, located at 300 Shirley Street, has contacted city officials with a request to potentially collaborate in the redevelopment. Additionally, other owners may now be in communication with city officials, or could be in the future.
The Virginia Village matter and the order of moving forward was not on the Council’s June 8 agenda, but Agin brought it up to Shields.
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