RICHMOND — Virginia’s House of Delegates voted unanimously Friday to repeal restrictions recently imposed on a college tuition program for military families, but Senate leaders do not intend to take the bill up when that chamber meets Monday, saying they want to limit any repeal to one year.
Virginia
Virginia members of Congress ask for investigation into site pick for new FBI headquarters – Virginia Mercury
![Virginia members of Congress ask for investigation into site pick for new FBI headquarters – Virginia Mercury](https://www.virginiamercury.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Getty_FBI.jpg)
Eleven members of Virginia’s 13-member congressional delegation are asking the acting inspector general for the federal General Services Administration to launch an investigation into the agency’s site selection process for the new Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters.
“There is overwhelming evidence suggesting that the General Services Administration (GSA) administered a site selection process fouled by political considerations and alleged impropriety — one that was repeatedly curated to arrive at a predetermined outcome,” the Nov. 15 letter said.
The request followed the announcement last week that the FBI’s new headquarters will be located in Greenbelt, Maryland, rather than in Landover, Maryland, or Springfield, Virginia.
That decision, which was made by the GSA, has sparked a furious backlash from Virginia’s members of Congress and Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who have pointed to concerns raised by FBI Director Christopher Wray about “the fairness and transparency” of the selection process. In a letter to FBI staff about the Greenbelt choice shortly after it was publicized, Wray alleged that there may have been “a potential conflict of interest” involving a high-ranking GSA official who overrode an agency panel’s unanimous recommendation that the headquarters be located in Springfield.
“The FBI observed that, at times, outside information was inserted into the process in a manner which appeared to disproportionately favor Greenbelt, and the justifications for the departures from the panel were varied and inconsistent,” Wray wrote. “Moreover, with one immaterial exception, each of the senior executive’s deviations from the unanimous panel either benefited the Greenbelt site or disfavored the Springfield site.”
While Wray did not name the official in his letter, documents released by the GSA last Thursday identified the individual as Nina Albert, the agency’s former commissioner of public buildings and a prior employee of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which owns the Greenbelt site.
Virginia’s congressional delegation draws heavily on Wray’s account in its request for an investigation into what the signatories describe as “a fatally flawed procurement.”
“In defending the indefensible, GSA has decided to proceed with the selection of Greenbelt over the objections of its client agency, the FBI,” wrote the group, which included Virginia Democratic Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, Democratic Reps. Gerry Connolly, Bobby Scott, Don Beyer, Abigail Spanberger, Jennifer Wexton and Jennifer McClellan, and Republican Reps. Rob Wittman, Jen Kiggans and Morgan Griffith.
Maryland, Virginia lawmakers tussle over FBI HQ decision at congressional hearing
Republican Reps. Ben Cline and Bob Good did not sign onto the letter. Good weighed in on the controversy on X, writing, “We ought not build a new FBI building, borrowing & spending taxpayer money for a multibillion dollar facility larger than the Pentagon. Instead, we ought to be SCRUTINIZING the money spent by a compromised FBI that targets conservatives, parents, & faith groups.”
Plans for the FBI to move out of its aging and decrepit headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. have been underway for almost two decades, with Virginia and Maryland competing against each other to secure the prize.
At a hearing held by the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee Tuesday, GSA’s administrator and Maryland representatives defended the Greenbelt choice, saying there was no merit to the conflict of interest claim and that Greenbelt would present the least cost to taxpayers.
“I am proud of the work that our team did,” said GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan. “This was inevitable that someone was going to be disappointed, between two states that were working very hard to land this facility.”
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Virginia
Virginia House votes to repeal restrictions on military tuition program
Created in 1930 to aid the families of World War I veterans, the program has expanded over the years to include out-of-state residents, graduate students and relatives of service members with non-combat-related injuries. The price tag has risen exponentially in recent years, from $12 million in 2019 to more than $65 million last year. Universities have borne the cost or passed it to other students.
Amid warnings that the program was unsustainable, legislators and Youngkin agreed to new restrictions, which require participants to tap federal aid, such as Pell Grants, before accessing the state program, and limit eligibility to Virginia residents pursuing undergraduate degrees.
They also require military families to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which uses a formula to calculate how much families can afford to pay for higher education. The wealthiest participants would pay a portion of the “expected family contribution,” expected to be capped at about $3,750 a year.
Current participants were grandfathered in, as was anyone who applied to college before May 15 under the budget language, which also provides $20 million to colleges and universities to offset waiver costs.
Those changes drew swift and vocal pushback from military families, leading Youngkin and the Democrats who lead the House and Senate to promise fixes. But they have not been on the same page about just what to do.
Youngkin and the House have favored fully repealing the restrictions until the issue can be studied, while Senate leaders have leaned toward more limited tinkering.
The House gathered for about an hour Friday to pass a bill to repeal the changes and provide $20 million a year for the next two fiscal years to cover some of the cost.
“It’s often been said if you find yourself in a hole you don’t want to be in, stop digging. Mr. Speaker, today I’m glad that we stopped digging,” Del. Mike A. Cherry (R-Colonial Heights) said on the floor ahead of the vote, praising Democratic and Republican leaders who’d pledged to “not weaponize” the issue.
But Senate Majority Leader Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) said that the measure will not move forward in the Senate, which on Monday will meet for a second time to try to advance its own fix.
“It will not be considered,” he said.
Senate leaders are backing a new bill to postpone the restrictions until July 1, 2025, provide $65 million over the next 12 months to cover the cost, and require the state’s Joint Legislative and Audit Review Commission to review the program and make recommendations by Sept. 1.
“We’re willing to repeal the new restrictions for one year … and use the surplus to take the burden off other students who are currently funding the program,” Surovell said.
House Speaker Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) said he was confident the two sides will eventually work out their differences.
“Regardless of what happens on Monday, we’re very, very close in concept,” Scott said. “I think everybody recognizes that the way the program is designed now, it can’t go on like that. But we want to make sure that we get it right.”
Scott said he would support means-testing and other restrictions once the issue has been fully studied.
“I’m a disabled veteran as well. I can afford to pay for my daughter’s tuition,” he said. “So I think we need to do some means-testing. We need to get some residency requirements. I think we need to take a look at it and see what’s doable.”
The Senate initially met June 18, when Democratic leaders hoped to pass a bill to lift the Pell Grant and FAFSA requirements for relatives of veterans killed in the line of duty or disabled in combat, but not those with non-combat disabilities. They met for more than five hours that day but did not advance the legislation.
Youngkin praised the House’s action Friday and leaned on the Senate to fall in line with that plan.
“Our veterans, first responders, and their families have spoken, and we have heard them,” he said in a written statement. “Now it is time for the Senate to pass the bill on Monday, so I can sign it immediately. … If the Senate Democrat Leadership does not support a repeal of the language, they are holding our veterans, first responders, and their families, hostage.”
Virginia
Data centers transformed Northern Virginia’s economy, but residents are wary of more expansion
![Data centers transformed Northern Virginia’s economy, but residents are wary of more expansion](https://whyy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/AP23200525513571-1200.jpg)
Julie and Chris Borneman signed petitions, wrote to their local officials, put a sign in front of their house, and joined a campaign against putting the power line through their property.
The recent expansion of data centers and associated power infrastructure is unprecedented, according to Julie Bolthouse, director of land use at the Piedmont Environmental Council, a local environmental nonprofit. She has worked at the nonprofit for 15 years.
“Prior to 2021 I had only worked on two or three transmission line proposals … Within the last three years, I’ve been a participant in stakeholder meetings for at least a dozen transmission line proposals,” Bolthouse said. “We’ve never seen this many transmission lines at once.”
The Piedmont Environmental Council has been keeping track of all these data centers and associated power infrastructure.
Bolthouse said the power company and state regulator have been approving many of these projects, but there is not enough public information about how much energy the data centers use, and their impact on air and water quality.
“We need transparency so that we can proactively plan ahead,” said Bolthouse. “Right now, what we’re doing is basically like our utility is handing out blank checks that we, the rate payers, are on the hook for paying for.”
To that, Aaron Ruby, spokesperson for Dominion Energy, the largest utility in Virginia, said, “as a public utility we are the most heavily regulated industry in Virginia.”
He said the state regulator reviews the energy costs to make sure everyone is paying their fair share, and the share of energy costs that households pay for has gone down, whereas the share for data centers has gone up.
He also added that Dominion Energy expects the power demand from data centers to nearly quadruple over the next 15 years.
The demand for power has never gone up by so much, so quickly.
Some of the electricity will come from natural gas plants, but Ruby said most of that will be from renewable energy like wind and solar power.
In a statement, Amazon pointed out that their company has been the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for four years, and that 90 percent of the energy the company uses comes from renewable sources.
Local officials say data centers saved their economy during the Great Recession of 2007. Buddy Rizer helped bring data centers to Loudoun County in northern Virginia, as the executive director for economic development for the county for the past 17 years.
He said they brought in data centers because during 2007, the local economy took a big hit when the housing bubble burst. The county lost a third of its tax revenue.
“Data centers have such an inordinate return on investment for a community that there’s nothing else that comes close,” Rizer said. “As an example: for every dollar a data center uses in services in our community. We get $26 back. There’s nothing that comes within $24 of that.”
He said the revenue from data centers helped transform their local economy, so they could invest in their schools and roads. He added that the tax revenue from data centers is almost a third of the county’s budget, and completely funds their operating budget.
But Rizer has also heard the concerns about how quickly the industry is growing in their area.
“When you’re in any job 17 years, in your community, you become your job … especially a fairly public facing job like mine,” Rizer said. “I have a lot of conversations at the grocery store or when I’m filling my car with gas.”
He expects the demand for data centers to continue to grow.
Rizer said cloud computing led to a big wave of data centers, then it was the demand for online services during COVID-19. Now, the big driver of growth is artificial intelligence.
He said data centers actually do not have a lot more room to grow in Loudoun County anymore. The more recent proposals for new data centers have been in the surrounding counties, Maryland, states like Kansas and Mississippi, or other countries, like China, India, Japan, and Malaysia.
Virginia
Online predator may have abused additional victims in Virginia
![Online predator may have abused additional victims in Virginia](https://images.foxtv.com/c107833-mcdn.mp.lura.live/expiretime=2082787200/4ebcae092d7c8b012b90e0b9d3bf02b33bb692c82e15f54eb493c3132c5198f3/iupl/AE6/E94/1280/720/AE6E948740BA2FA178EAD74DB453B2B5.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
Police in northern Virginia are warning parents about predators on popular social media platforms. This comes after a Fairfax County man was arrested for attempting to meet up with a child. FOX 5’s Nana-Sentuo Bonsu is in McLean with the latest.
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