Latest news with #CommonwealthofVirginia
Yahoo
05-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gov. Youngkin announces removal of toll collection on Coleman Bridge
YORK COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) — Governor Glenn Youngkin announced Tuesday morning a plan to remove the toll collection for the George P. Coleman Bridge. According to a release, the elimination, which is scheduled to take place on Aug. 8, will help Virginians nearly $60 million. This comes after Youngkin's 2025 budget amendment which called for the elimination of tolls on the Coleman Bridge by Jan. 1, 2026. Potential end to Coleman Bridge tolls could spark growth in Gloucester 'Eliminating tolls on the Coleman Bridge is more than just a financial decision, it's a commitment to easing the burden on families, commuters, and local businesses who rely on this vital connection every day,' Youngkin said. 'By removing this toll, we are putting nearly $60 million back into the pockets of hardworking Virginians, allowing them to keep more of their hard-earned money and strengthen our local economy. This move also reflects our broader dedication to making life more affordable and accessible across the Commonwealth, supporting economic growth while enhancing the quality of life for all Virginians.' Currently, the tolls for the Coleman Bridge, which helps to connect York and Gloucester Counties, are collected from northbound traffic and helps to generate nearly $6 million each year. A release states that around half of those funds go towards toll collection operations. While the Commonwealth has already repaid the legally obligated bond debt for the 1996 expansion of the bridge, the release said there is still an additional $29.6 million in outstanding debt owed to Virginia's Toll Facility Revolving Account — which would require tolling collections through 2034 to completely repay. 'The Commonwealth of Virginia has fulfilled its obligation to repay the bond debt for the Coleman Bridge, so it's time to stop asking Virginians to pay tolls on this facility, and we are doing so five months early,' Virginia Secretary of Transportation W. Sheppard Miller III said. 'There are extensive costs required to continue tolling, and we believe that the toll money collected would be better off in the hands of taxpayers.' The release also states that in order for the tolling collection on the Coleman Bridge to continue, there would need to be a nearly $5 million investment to continue operations. Through eliminating the toll, the investment to prolong the useful life of the toll infrastructure would not be needed. As part of the work to remove the tolling signage on the Coleman Bridge, a single-lane closure is expected to take place starting at 9 p.m. on Aug. 8 for the northbound lanes of Route 17. Upon completion, traffic will continually shift to the right until the entire toll plaza has been demolished. 'Working together, we were finally able to bring an end to the tolls on the Coleman Bridge,' Senate Republican Leader Ryan T. McDougle said. 'This is a win for Gloucester, Mathews, and our entire region — putting more money back into the pockets of hardworking Virginians and easing the burden on families who rely on this vital connection every day.' For more information on the toll removal, click here. Continue to check for updates. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Virginia lawmakers discuss FEMA restructuring following deadly Texas flooding
(WFXR)- Central Texas has been dealing with dangerous flooding this month and more than one thousand miles away in Virginia, the tragedy is being felt. 'These people are like family to us, deep relationships,' said Governor Glenn Youngkin. More than one hundred people have died in the Texas floods and at least as many are still missing. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and his family were in Texas at the start of the flooding. He says the Commonwealth, which regularly experiences flash flooding, has assisted in helping the Lone Star State. Federal funding at risk: what it means for public broadcast in Roanoke 'The Commonwealth of Virginia has sent swiftwater rescue teams to go support them.' said Youngkin. 'You all know from the efforts we've had in order to manage natural disasters here, that the teams get tired. The flooding comes amid talks by President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to either remake or wind down FEMA. '[FEMA] is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens,' according to a recent FEMA statement. However, a New York Times report claimed FEMA did not answer thousands of emergency calls from Texans struggling during the flooding. Republican state lawmaker John McGuire said the communication issues began before Trump took office. ''If you do what you always did, you're going to get what you always got,' said Rep. John McGuire of Virginia's fifth district. 'We've all heard that phrase, right? The Biden Administration refused to help homes during the flooding from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.' Not everyone in Congress shares McGuire's opinion. The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program, which helped local governments reduce hazard risks, was cut from FEMA in April. Virginia Dems join Planned Parenthood to launch 'Bros for Repro' U.S. Senator Tim Kaine said FEMA provides a crucial service to Americans. 'If you didn't have that, and every state had to have their emergency management teams at kind of surge level to prepare for a hurricane it would be very wasteful,' said Kaine. 'So, I think it's actually a better bang for the buck.' According to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, it is too early to think about what will happen if FEMA is restructured. WFXR's Paul Hess contributed to this article. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Traitor or hero? Statue of George Washington stirs mixed reaction in London.
Why was a rebel commander and vanquisher of redcoats — the confounding father of a breakaway republic — ascending a pedestal in a plaza devoted to Britain's own heroes, including the eldest son of the king Washington routed in the Revolution? Related : Advertisement To most of those pausing to watch, there were no hard feelings about that 18th-century unpleasantness. But Washington's arrival was a bit of a head-scratcher to many, given the current transatlantic tumult and the state of the special relationship 46 presidents later. 'At least it's not Trump,' Townshend concluded with a shrug before going on her way. 'We're not completely happy with America right now,' said Judith Webster, visiting London from the city of Sheffield in the north of England. 'I'm not really sure I want him here.' Families walking to school passed the statue of Washington. Gabriella Demczuk In fact, the metal commander in chief was not a newcomer. The sculpture was sent in 1914 by the Commonwealth of Virginia, a gift from former colony to former colonizer to mark the 100-year anniversary of the Treaty of Ghent, which formally ended decades of war between the United States and the United Kingdom. It was a cast copy of a marble statue by French master Jean-Antoine Houdon, sculpted from a plaster mask of Washington's face. The original statue stands in the Virginia Capitol to this day. Advertisement Trafalgar Square, near the Charing Cross rail station in central London, is a bit more exposed to the elements. So after a century of the replica steeping in London pollution, a group of Virginians had it taken away in May for restoration and the construction of a new limestone plinth. It was rededicated Wednesday in a ceremony featuring Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, the American and British ambassadors, and former prime ministers Theresa May and David Cameron. But Washington's spot flanking the entrance of the National Gallery — Britain's National Gallery — has always been an oddity, showing up on lists of London's weird wonders and a fun fact for taxi drivers to share with American tourists. Tour guide legend holds that the statute was set on a patch of dirt transported from Virginia to honor Washington's reputed pledge to never again set foot on English soil. Locals, meanwhile, in online message boards and tour groups, periodically debate the propriety of honoring a British subject who went on to best the British army and slice off a valuable hunk of the empire. 'George Washington was indeed a traitor to the crown,' a poster said last year in a thread on the topic on Quora. But to most of the visitors and workers surging through Trafalgar every day, he is just one more garden-variety great man in the sculptural clutter of central London. Advertisement A crowd watched as conservators placed the Washington statue in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. Gabriella Demczuk 'Everyone walks past statues all the time without looking at them,' said Alexandra Jackson, a Blue Badge tourist guide. 'It was really more noticed when it disappeared. People were wondering if it was taken away because someone might throw something at it.' The rebooting of Trafalgar's Washington began when John Gerber, an architect and developer from McLean, did a double take when he passed the familiar figure during a visit last year. He was delighted to read the inscription that it was a gift of his home state but distressed to see how worn it was, particularly the pedestal. Gerber formed a fund-raising group, Friends of the Washington Statue, and pitched the idea of a rehab to Youngkin and British architect Norman Foster, who agreed to oversee the work. In May, workers wrangled the figure and the 1.3-ton pedestal to the studio of art conservator Rupert Harris. 'It's never touched the ground since it's been here,' Harris said in his east London workshop this month, with the Father of America standing serenely amid the dismembered heads and torsos. Related : For weeks, Washington stood elevated on a wooden pallet as he was stripped of grime, repaired, and buffed to high gloss with repeated coats of the black wax used on many London sculptures. That just was normal procedure, but Harris was also aware of the whole never-touch-English-soil thing. Which, as it turns out, is not true. Nothing the researchers could find suggests Washington ever said he was loath to set foot in England, nor that Virginia clay was brought for the statue to stand on. Advertisement 'It seems to be completely made up,' said Douglas Bradburn, president of Mount Vernon, Washington's Virginia home, now a museum and popular tourist stop. 'It goes completely against the character of George Washington, who made it clear he did not resent the people of England.' Washington never visited Britain (his only trip abroad was to Barbados), but he considered himself a proud English subject for the first part of his life, Bradburn said. He was popular in Britain even during the American Revolution, known to be magnanimous in victory and respectful to defeated officers. George III himself, upon hearing that the general who pried America from his royal grasp gave up his command and returned to farming, called Washington 'the greatest man of the age,' according to Troy Bickham, a Texas A&M University historian who has written about the post-Revolution relationship between the two countries. 'The English public were frustrated with their own generals, who weren't able to win,' Bickham said. 'And here was this American guy, a gentleman farmer. He wouldn't even take a salary.' This reputation made it an easy sell when, 131 years after the Revolutionary War, Virginia offered London a Washington of its own. The statue arrived in 1914, and King George V personally approved Trafalgar for its home. World War I intervened, and it wasn't until 1921 that the statue was dedicated. By then the countries had become true allies, this time fighting together in a devastating war. It was the moment some scholars say the special relationship actually began.
Epoch Times
01-05-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
A Tax Man With Convictions and Courage
Commentary Have you ever heard of someone so principled that he quit his job rather than do something he knew to be wrong? I admire people of such integrity. We need more of them. Let me tell you about one whose story is especially relevant on April 15, the date the federal government demands we meet our income tax obligations. This man was head of the IRS. His name was T. Coleman Andrews. Born in Virginia in 1899, Andrews possessed a head for numbers. He loved accounting, an affection which I personally could never understand. Accounting baffled and frustrated me during my undergraduate days; I scraped by with a 'C.' I agree with whoever described an accountant as 'someone who solves a problem you did not know you had in a way you don't understand.' Andrews was not only good at it, but he also founded several successful accounting firms and worked in high accounting positions for the Commonwealth of Virginia, the U.S. State Department, and the General Accounting Office in Washington. In 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him Commissioner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In an interview while still new in the job, Andrews said that he would insist that every employee engage taxpayers with 'a sincere desire to be helpful,' but he promised to come down hard on anybody caught cheating on his taxes. Related Stories 4/17/2025 3/23/2025 Andrews moved to simplify complex tax forms. He changed the Bureau's name to what we know today—the Internal Revenue Service. He adopted numerous measures to improve efficiency, but when Congress overhauled tax law in 1955, he realized how 'unreformable' the system was. Isaac William Martin, in his 2013 book titled 'Rich People's Movements,' quotes Andrews as lamenting that the congressmen who wrote the bill 'do not themselves know what they mean.' Barely two years into his tenure on the inside, Andrews abruptly resigned. His views on the agency and the income tax had evolved. Andrews was one of those rare public servants who 'grew in office.' He could no longer hold a position that put him at odds with his conscience. He came to see the IRS and the tax code as oppressive, incomprehensible, and corrupt. Shortly after his departure from the IRS, he issued a statement explaining his position: 'Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax men might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion. 'The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100 percent of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now it is imposing a tax as high as 91 percent. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds. 'The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking from each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men. 'The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies upon the estates of people when they die. 'As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves of the government. People cannot pull themselves up by the bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.' Clearly, this was a guy who didn't allow power or a paycheck to turn either his brain or his spine into jelly. Agree with him or not, you must admit there's some impressive personal character there. Andrews continued to speak out against the income tax and the ever-bigger government it was financing. In 1956, he even ran for President of the United States on a third-party ticket—a campaign that, controversially, was built around a states' rights platform. While some saw it as a principled stance for limited government, others rightly noted its alignment with political figures and movements that defended segregation. He died in 1983 at the age of 84. The school in my native state of Pennsylvania where I struggled in that accounting class more than a half-century ago is Grove City College. In researching this article, I was proud to learn that in 1963, GCC bestowed an honorary doctorate upon T. Coleman Andrews. What Andrews had to say may not be much consolation to you this tax season. Perhaps it will be of at least small comfort, however, to know that we once had an IRS Commissioner who saw the harm of the whole business and possessed the courage of his convictions to wash his hands of it. Additional Reading: ' ' ' ' ' ' From the Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fairfax County calls for increase to unemployment benefits for fired federal workers
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. () — There's a push in Northern Virginia to increase how much money recently fired federal workers get paid while on unemployment. It comes at the same time as we could see a hike in unemployment benefits for all Virginians. The Fairfax County supervisors who sent a letter to Gov. Glenn Youngkin and democratic leaders said Virginia's unemployment payouts are behind D.C. and Maryland's, and with many federal workers now applying for those benefits, they say now is the time to take action. 'The repercussions of these job losses are far-reaching,' said Fairfax County Board Chair Jeff McKay. Democrats bringing fired federal workers to Trump speech McKay and his colleague James Walkinshaw led several of their board colleagues in proposing, and sending, a letter. In it, they describe the help the workers are getting through unemployment claims as 'meager.' 'What Virginia offers today doesn't allow families to pay their mortgage, doesn't allow families to pay their groceries, doesn't help those small businesses who rely on those federal employees and contractors as customers to stay open,' Walkinshaw said. In Virginia, unemployment benefits are capped at $378/week. In Maryland, it's $430/week. In D.C., it's $444/week. Walkinshaw said what makes federal workers' claims unique is that they are reimbursed by the federal government, making now a good time to increase the amount. Cherry blossoms near peak bloom at the Tidal Basin 'It costs the Commonwealth of Virginia nothing to increase the maximum unemployment benefits for these federal employees,' he said. The letter outlined potential improvements. 'Improvements could include dedicating a portion of the Commonwealth's surplus to provide an additional $600 per month to those affected by these federal cuts, mirroring the supplemental benefits extended during the COVID-19 pandemic,' it reads. 'This benefit should extend to all Virginia residents impacted by federal cuts, including part-time, self-employed, and gig workers, and those whose place of employment is outside of Virginia.' The Virginia General Assembly recently approved a measure that would have increased everyone's unemployment benefits by $100/week. The governor sent the bill back, amending it to a proposed $52/week increase. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
