December 2, 2025 Legislative Committee - Dec 02, 2025

meeting

Fairfax County Board Committees 1h 33m 3 speakers 8 agenda items transcribed 2 days ago official recording ↗

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What were the key priorities reviewed at the October 7th meeting?

Andres F. Jimenez 0:01

Good morning, everyone, if everyone can have their seats.

Andres F. Jimenez 0:11

All right. Well, thank you all for being here. Welcome to the December 2nd, 2025 meeting of the Board of Supervisors Legislative Committee. At our last meeting on October 7th, the committee reviewed key priorities and discussed federal and state dynamics affecting Fairfax County. We also underscored the importance of clear communication coordination with our General Assembly delegation. We reviewed both the 2026 draft legislative program for the General Assembly as well as looked at current federal priorities. In addition, we reviewed the BAC proposals. Today, we're going to continue that work by reviewing both the state and federal draft legislative programs to ensure they reflect the county's priorities heading into the upcoming General Assembly session and the year ahead.

Andres F. Jimenez 1:00

The point of today's meeting is to learn about the changes made to these guiding documents after the public hearing on November 18th as we move closer to a vote. This year, there's an increased focus on strengthening collaboration with our state delegation and improving communication with our residents. We have three presentations today. The current state of federal legislation presented by the Ferguson Group and NACO. The second, 2026 draft federal strategies and principles. And third, the draft legislative program. As a reminder, this is a non-voting committee, and we will not be voting today. And please remember to hold all questions until each of the separate three presentations are done. Before we begin, I want to ask for acceptance of the meeting summary from our October 7th meeting.

Andres F. Jimenez 1:50

Unless there are any comments or corrections, we will consider that summary accepted and presented. Does anyone have any comments on those? Moving on, with that accepted, I will turn over the meeting to the Ferguson group, the first presentation, and on to you.

Zach Israel 2:09

Well, thank you, Chairman. Good morning, everybody. Zach Israel from the Ferguson Group. So this presentation is going to be jointly done between NACO and TFG. And so we're going to start with Mark from NACO and then turn over to my colleague Jeff from the Ferguson Group and myself to go over sort of a higher level framework of of what we've experienced the last 10 to 11 months, and then get a little more granular in terms of issue areas that have direct impact to Fairfax County that are reflected throughout your federal legislative platform. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mark to kick things off.

Mark Hurtaco 2:45

Thank you so much, Zach. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's really an honor to be here today. My name is Mark Hurtaco. I'm the Chief Government Affairs Officer for the National Association of Counties. I want to thank you all for your work on behalf of your residents here in Fairfax County. And I want to thank you for your engagement with the National Association of Counties. The National Association of Counties attempts to speak with a unified voice for all 3,069 counties in America. And I'm here to talk a little bit about the changing federal policy landscape before we kick it over to Zach and TFG for some specifics. So we are entering a new era of federalism, which is the balance between state, federal, local, and tribal governments.

Mark Hurtaco 3:31

NACO is calling this era the big shift. Federalism is shifting, federal policy is shifting, and in many ways impacting state and local governments. There are three key messages on this big shift that I'll touch on throughout this presentation. or three key dynamics, I should say, or mechanisms for the shift. It's going to mean increased costs for state and local governments, county governments, decreased intergovernmental support from reduced federal funding, and then resulting in reduced local autonomy as more restrictions and other preemptive federal policies come down from Washington, DC. So Virginia counties receive significant intergovernmental revenue, which you can think of as revenue from state and federal governments.

Mark Hurtaco 4:21

These federal shifts, federal cuts, will affect the orange band on this chart.