Legislative Reform
Virginians of all stripes acknowledge a structural issue with our General Assembly: our legislative session is too short. Alternating 60 and 48 day annual sessions may have been sufficient for the Virginia of 1971, but in the year 2025, the short session leads to unreasonably quick deliberation on major legislation that affects some 8.7 million souls. In fact, since the year 2000, 16 of 24 legislative sessions have required an additional special session to pass needed legislation.
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While I maintain that our General Assembly should remain part-time to keep legislators as close to their communities as possible, we should consider increasing the session to a maximum of 60 days in both even and odd years. While legislators would not be required to use all the days, it would ease stress and allow more critical business to be discussed each year.
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We should compensate our legislators commensurate with the gravity of the work they are doing. Virginia would be the 22nd largest economy in the world if it were an independent nation; accordingly, we should have some of the best legislators in the world and pay them well for it. I propose competitively increasing the salaries of our legislators.