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V

irginia

C

apitol

C

onnections

, S

pring

2015

12

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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