City-County Chair's blog

When I heard Gov McDonnell went on television and said state employees “pay nothing” towards their retirement I wanted to give the Governor the benefit of the doubt. He himself signed the budget bill that required state employees to do just that. This point was so important to the Governor that he devoted five paragraphs to it in his State of the Commonwealth address in January.

Additionally state employees contribution to their own retirement was one of the sticking points of the Wisconsin budget battle. This battle brought the issue of state retirement system insolvency to the national stage. McDonnell said that he stood with the Republican Governor of Wisconsin in his efforts to cut state employee benefits and compared their budgetary woes with ours Virginia.

As young professionals and members of Virginia's growing work force, we depend heavily on a working transportation system. The problem is that all of the major transportation infrastructure systems in our Commonwealth have reached their chocking point. To add to that fact many of our roads and rail lines have reached and surpassed their chocking points years ago and Virginia's government has been unable to receive millions of dollars in well needed matching funds, from the federal government because we have been unable to raise the necessary funds for the match.