January 30, 2026 Legislative Committee - Jan 30, 2026

meeting

Fairfax County Board Committees 1h 27m 6 speakers 5 agenda items transcribed 1 day ago official recording ↗

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Andres F. Jimenez 0:05

Good afternoon and welcome to the January 30th meeting of the Legislative Committee. I know many of us spent part of the week digging out from under the snow. I know I did and I am still digging out. And I want to take a moment to recognize what the snow showed us about collaboration and clear communication among local and state partners. The aftermath of a snowstorm is never easy to navigate, as we all know too well, and this week demonstrated how effective we can be as a county when we work together. I want to make sure I thank every department and office for their participation and support, FC DOT, FCPS, the Park Authority, and so many others for their continued commitment to serving our residents.

Andres F. Jimenez 0:45

I'd now like to begin today's meeting by, again, extending a warm welcome back to our legislative staff. I'm glad everyone was able to make it back from Richmond safe. Today's meeting will look similar to last week's meeting. First, we're going to review specific issues of budget amendments, transit, and housing. Then we're going to move to bills for discussion, bills with recommended positions, and bills with updates. Opportunities to comment will be after the general housing update. after each individual bill for discussion, and finally, an open discussion before we adjourn, as we did last week. Any additional comments or questions can be directed to myself or Jennifer, who I will now pass it off to for today's updates.

Jennifer Vanney 1:32

Hello, Jennifer Vanney, Legislative Director. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was saying driving back up here, there's a lot more snow here, but I think the ice is actually slicker down there. So hope everyone's staying safe. So diving into it, I want to give a quick update about initiatives. So two of them haven't been docketed yet, the Park Authority one or the muffler one. But there's been a lot of action around the urban public-private partnership this week in the Senate. It got passed on a committee, but then it was – in finance due to a small fisc, it was turned into a Section 1 study. So it's still alive. We still have hope that we'll be able to move forward even if it's just a study to look at how to best implement the work.

Jennifer Vanney 2:21

So that's the updates there. That leads us right into budget amendments. So if you look at the budget amendment page, it says budget amendments at the top. You'll see at the top the first section is our initiatives. So the first two have to do with the urban public. I need to stop trying to say this word. Urban public private partnership fund. And then you'll see that there is another one. The top one is actually about the local directors of finance. Then the two on UPPF. And then the two we did for K-12. You'll see the way the rest of the page. It's quite a long document. We won't go through it all. But we organized it first by positions, then priorities, and then support positions, and then some general updates.

Jennifer Vanney 3:16

To call out, just because we called them out with a budget chart, On the first page at the bottom, you'll see item 271. You'll see three separate things. This has to do with the CSA rate change and the cap they put in place. So this is removing what the governor did. We'll definitely be advocating that this gets included in the conference budget. But that's what those are. If you go to page two, you'll see that there's a section on federal changes for the safety net. So these budget amendments mostly have to do with funding for VDSS to deal with the SNAP and Medicaid changes. There are two great next in the housing. The first two have to do with the housing trust fund and increasing it to hit that 200 million goal.

Jennifer Vanney 4:08

It's been talked about a lot, especially by local government partners, that this is what's really going to be helpful to move forward when we're really talking about housing. The next thing I wanted to just call out quick

Jeffrey C. McKay 4:22

is... Can we get one clarification? These numbers that you have on here, these are state budget numbers, not the numbers in terms of revenue that would come to the county?

Rachna Sizemore Heizer 4:32

Correct.

Jeffrey C. McKay 4:33

I just want to make sure people are understanding that, because $1 million spread throughout the entire Commonwealth of Virginia is very different than $1 million coming to Fairfax County.