Northern Virginia leaders plead for state's help amid federal job cuts
Northern Virginia leaders urged lawmakers on Tuesday to enact emergency legislation to help stabilize their local economy as the White House cuts federal jobs, which they said has sharply impacted the dense cluster of government employees and contractors based in the suburbs of the nation's capital.
In presentations to a House of Delegates bipartisan committee addressing federal reductions, local authorities described the job reductions as a once-in-a-lifetime overhaul of Fairfax County's economy that would push high-salary workers to leave the state.
Fairfax County Board Chairman Jeff McKay said the shift would impact staffing at other ventures, ranging from child care services to staffing at the local county jail.
'What we're facing here is far worse than COVID,' said McKay, a board member of the state's most populous county. 'COVID was an international pandemic that was affecting everyone. This is something that's acutely affecting Virginia and northern Virginia.'
McKay added: 'We got through COVID because we had a lot of federal support. We will get no federal support with this. In fact, it is federal actions that are causing these actions.'
As of Tuesday, roughly 1,300 federal employees and contractors have filed unemployment insurance claims with the Virginia Employment Commission since the end of January, Secretary of Labor George' Bryan' Slater, who attended the committee meeting, said to a reporter during the meeting.
The meeting comes as all 100 House of Delegates seats will be on the ballot in November, along with the governor. Three of the four lawmakers in Democrats' most competitive districts, according to a recent announcement by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, serve on the bipartisan committee.
According to a presentation by the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, federal jobs account for roughly 6% of the workforce in northern Virginia and about 5% of jobs for the entire state. By comparison, such government positions only account for 2% of U.S. jobs, according to the regional commission.
Republican Del. Rob Bloxom said the House of Delegates committee would need more clarity on how the workforce reductions would impact state revenues. He added that the committee should engage more with the Virginia Employment Commission, an agency overseen by Slater.
'Like the administration or hate them, we are all in this together,' Bloxom said. 'We really need them in the room to verify what they're seeing.'
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has created an online jobs portal for people looking for employment in the state, including a specific page for federal workers.
In late March, Youngkin said: 'Let me be really clear: anybody who writes that there are only fast food jobs is not doing your job. Go to the website, pretend you're someone in Fredericksburg, Virginia, who might lose their job and go find all of the jobs that would match that person's career.'
On Tuesday, Alissa Tafti, a former union leader for her agency's union, said she worried that former federal workers would still have difficulty finding employment in Virginia that would match their salaries, even if there are available positions out there.
'Federal workers who are getting their jobs cut, many of them ... are people with really specific skill sets — highly skilled individuals, but with really particular skill sets,' said Tafti, an economist who worked for the federal government until the end of March. 'It makes it really hard to find another job in another field. The economy is going to have a really hard time absorbing this many people.'
Lawmakers on the bipartisan committee are speaking to authorities in different regions of Virginia to assess how cuts to federal jobs and spending are impacting parts of the state. The committee's next meeting will be in southwestern Virginia, lawmakers said. ___
Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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