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irginia
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apitol
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onnections
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pring
2015
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Child Care:
Virginia’s Evolving
Improvement
By Senator Emmett W. Hanger, Jr.
A name to a face; a tie to your
community; a child rather than just a
number or statistic. Sometimes that is
what you need to start a policy change.
Child care is something every parent
must consider in some form or another.
And good parents try their utmost best
to be diligent in finding reputable, safe
providers. Likewise, good providers work
hard to offer safe, affordable care. But
recently, tragic news accounts over and
over have demonstrated that when parents
can’t verify a trustworthy background and providers are not
afforded a template for safe care, then you end up with children in
harm’s way. Worse, you end up with the abuse or death of precious
children. And these losses prompted critical work in the Virginia
General Assembly.
I and other legislators set out in 2014 to craft a legislative
workgroup to improve inadequacies in background checks for
providers. Federal law was being implemented that those taking
federal subsidies would be subject to a more comprehensive
national-based fingerprint background check. A name-only check
was being conducted in Virginia at the time. The workgroup was
tasked with implementing a system-wide fingerprint background
check to catch those working with aliases and verify information
out of state.
This Session, I offered legislation to implement the
recommendations of that workgroup as well as close a loophole
that some barrier crime violators were still not prohibited from
offering child care services.
In addition, Delegate Bobby Orrock and numerous other
legislators in the House and Senate offered a variety of legislation
to address licensure and threshold issues. In the end, Delegate
Orrock and I shepherded through bills that ended up in conference
to finalize the end result of consensus reform.
Advocates for tighter licensure requirements worked along
side of those who wanted to maintain exemptions for religious and
other reasons and those who wanted to keep a non-licensed option
as well.
Though no one got exactly all they wanted, we did pass
reform legislation that reduces the licensure threshold from 6 to
5 children; requires a fingerprint background check of all licensed
or registered providers; closed the barrier crime loophole; and
provides tools for local governments and the Department of Social
Services to know who in the community is offering child care in a
licensed or unlicensed setting.
There is still work to do but we can build on the reforms we
have put into place this session. Many of the provisions have a
delayed enactment of a year or two, so DSS can better prepare
and educate parents and providers to insure the safety and well-
being of our children. A positive step forward has been made, and
families should feel confident that concerns are being heard. Work
will continue, and though the ultimate issue of care falls to parents,
the Commonwealth needs to continue to insure the proper tools are
offered to insure safety and education to all involved.
Member of the House: 1983-1992; Member of the Senate: 1996-
District 24 includes all of Augusta County, Greene County, Staunton
City, Waynesboro City, Madison County; part of Rockingham
County and Culpeper County.
Virginia’s
Democracy Deficit:
Uncompetitive Elections
By brian Turner
Competitive elections are a hallmark
of a democratic political system. Election
results should reflect the general policy
preferences of the voters, and electoral
competition allows the voting public to
weigh competing visions of the best policies.
Elections should also serve as civic rituals
that link the voter to the political system.
Wearing the “I voted” sticker should be a
meaningful act.
If one accepts these normative
propositions about what elections “should”
do, then one can argue that Virginia suffers from a democracy deficit.
Too many of our elections are uncompetitive, and thus fail to produce
meaningful policy debate, elect representatives who reflect the
general policy preferences of the voters, and provide a meaningful
civic ritual for the citizenry. The problem is caused by a redistricting
process based on partisan gerrymandering. This problem is found in
every state of the union and has existed since the founding of the
republic, but it is exaggerated in contemporary Virginia.
The nature of the problem can be seen by comparing statewide
contests with elections in the various districts. Virginia has become
a swing state in recent presidential elections. Statewide elections
have been closely contested, with several razor-thin margins between
the candidates, including the Attorneys General races in 2005 and
2013 and U.S. Senate contests in 2006 and 2014. In fifteen statewide
races over the last decade, there have been five “blowouts” (ten point
margin of victories), three of which came in the Republican sweep
of state executive branch offices in 2009 and two in Democratic
victories in the 2008 U.S. Senate race and the 2013 Lieutenant
Governor election. Democrats have won ten of these elections, and
Republicans five.
The situation is distinct in the General Assembly, especially in
the House of Delegates. After taking a 52 to 47 majority in the House
in 2000, the Republicans were able to control the redistricting process
and improved their seat total to 64 in the 2001 elections. That margin
eroded as the state became more competitive, but still the GOP
controlled between 54 and 59 seats in the latter half of the decade. In
the 2011 elections, thanks to redistricting the Republicans increased
their majority to 66 seats, and added one more in 2013, so as to now
have a two-thirds majority in the House of Delegates in a state that is
nowhere nearly this “red.”
Likewise, Virginia’s delegation in the U.S. House of
Representatives does not reflect the competitive partisan balance in
the state. While Democrats have won all four U.S. Senate races since
2005, Republicans have won the majority of seats in the House, in
most years controlling eight of Virginia’s eleven seats. Since the 2006
elections, the GOP has won 37 of the 55 House races, again over two-
thirds of these races. And a whopping 87% (48) of these so-called
contests were blowouts, with Democratic congressman Bobby Scott
leading the way by winning the Third District without opposition
three times and easily defeating his opponent by over 40 points the
other two times over the past decade.
Redistricting in Virginia is controlled by the state legislature, as
is the case in 37 states. Advanced geographic information system
(GIS) technology allows the gerrymander-minded politician to
quickly draw district lines that protect party and incumbents. Indeed,
one such Virginia politician expressed to me his relief that, thanks
to redistricting, he had no opponent in the 2011 elections. Certainly,
See
Virginia’s Democracy Deficit
, continued on page 14
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