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Jade Harris, former Glasgow vice mayor who is making her second run for a seat in the General Assembly in less than a year, said she found herself “frustrated at the sluggish pace” of the state budgeting process this year.
“As someone with local government experience, I know our school boards and local governing bodies were even more frustrated at the holdup, as they could not create accurate budgets for themselves until they knew how much state funding would be available,” said Harris.
Because of gridlock among legislators in a politically divided General Assembly, a state budget wasn’t approved until a couple of months into the new fiscal year.
“While I was disappointed that this year’s budget lacked critical funding for I-81, I believe it was a decent budget overall considering the current division in our General Assembly,” she said. “It delivered for families, schools and mental health care, and will provide an excellent framework for future bipartisan budgets where we can allocate funds in a way that will serve those three concerns even better. Let’s hope we can create something similar without the holdup next go round.”
Harris is the Democratic Party’s nominee for newly reconfigured state Senate District 3, which encompasses all of the Rockbridge area. In a special election this past January, she was unsuccessful in a bid to be elected to the House of Delegates.
If elected this year, she said, a budget priority of hers would be “ensuring that our public schools have their funding brought up to an appropriate standard.”
She alluded to a recent study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission that found Virginia’s public schools are woefully underfunded, according to the Standards of Quality formula.
“Currently, the state is putting an undue burden on localities when it comes to funding the school system, which, according to JLARC, has been underfunded by billions of dollars. My other budget priorities include allocating funds to Interstate 81 … and expanding rural broadband further.”
Harris noted the importance of this year’s legislative elections, which will determine which party controls the General Assembly. “If the Democrats prevail this November, our commonwealth will automatically be better off because we can put the constant culture wars down and return to the business of the people.”
She said she favors legislation calling for a referendum that would “enshrine the right to an abortion in the Virginia Constitution so that we might put this issue to bed.” She would like to return to “reproductive choice under the parameters set forth by Roe v. Wade [that] was the common sense, popular policy, and so should those parameters remain in the commonwealth of Virginia.”
Other objectives she would like to work toward include “revitalizing our infrastructure, … supporting the working class by removing barriers to organizing such as our Right to Work law. … I would also like to work on some climate preparedness strategies to ensure that our localities are well prepared in case of future catastrophic weather events … Various other [of my] priorities include finally getting our recreational marijuana market off the ground, adjusting our taxation bracket so that earners making only $17,000 per year are no longer taxed at the same rate as millionaires, creating a universal p re-k o ption, fi xing our mental health care professional shortage, incentivizing rural business development and prioritizing affordable housing solutions.”
