The Alexandria City Council Legislative Subcommittee met on March 2, 2026, at 12:15 PM to discuss state budget updates, pending legislation, and advocacy strategies. Mayor Gaskins presided, welcoming new Councilman Chapman. Key topics included the state budget amendments (Freedom House Museum, locally subsidized state employees, UASI, transit consolidation), K-12 education funding, WMATA funding, and several housing and transit bills.
Okay, I see Councilman Chapman. So it's 533, and I'm going to go ahead and officially call the meeting to order. Our first order of business is to pass the minutes. Councilman Chapman, would you mind making a motion to approve the minutes from last meeting? Yes, ma'am. I'm going to move approval of the minutes around from the last meeting. Okay. There has been a motion and I'll second it. All those in favor. Aye. All right, meeting minutes approved. The next item of business is to welcome Councilman Chapman. Welcome. Our nearest member of the legislative committee. Councilman Chapman, anything you want to say before we dive in? Nope, looking forward to this. Yeah. That's it. Okay, sounds good. Next item, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Ginsberg for a budget update. Welcome, Councilman Chapman to your first meeting. And thank you, Mayor Gaskins, for this opportunity. From the well, what this year would be the previous governor. So Governor Glenn Youncan at the time in December released a budget. What came out on this weekend were the approved the budget amendments that the House and the Senate were approving and actually two budgets. There's a caboose budget for FY26, and then there's the biennial budget for FY27 and 28. And the amendments came out on Sunday, and they've already, each chamber uh was required to approve the amendments from their chamber uh yesterday. So uh we know what each chamber has in their budgets at this point, and I'm just gonna quickly walk through what made it through each chamber in their budgets pretty high level, but if you have any questions, please do ask me. I'm gonna start with our requested city budget amendments, and I'm going to start with uh Freedom House accessibility, which were we had an ask in each chamber, one from Elizabeth Bennett Parker in the House and one from Senator uh Evan in the Senate. And we requested $2 million for the Freedom House Museum for money that would allow the Office of Historic Alexandria to construct an elevator, providing access down to the basement where enslaved men were once held prior to being trafficked to the deep south. Um the funding was also meant to uh help level the floors at um on the second level as well. I see Sean's nodding his head, which means I'm getting it right. Thank you. Um so uh we did get a budget amendment in the Senate uh for one million dollars, and and then you uh you guys at um Office of Historic Alexander would be required to match that funding. Um we didn't get a budget amendment in the House. Uh and now we're gonna wait and we're not waiting we're working with our delegation and trying to determine who the conferees will be to make sure that we continue to push for that one million dollars and make sure that it's carried in the House as well, so that we can get it when it goes into conference. Um the second budget amendment uh also carried by uh now Senator Elizabeth Bennett Parker, then delegate Elizabeth Bennett Parker, and then Senator Um Adam Evan was a work group on locally subsidized state employees. Um the city requested the establishment of work group to examine the fiscal impacts associated with these locally subsidized locally subsidized state supported employees, which um includes employees in our sheriff's office or Commonwealth's attorney or circuit courts or state health department, really vital components of our city. Um it cost the city about 41 miles, 41 million dollars a year from the city's budget to support those positions. Um neither chamber included a work group, but there was a in the Senate bill um an amendment that contains language that require the Department of Planning and Budget to collect full-time salary data and employee counts of these state supported locally uh local, or they call them state supported local employees. And I know that our uh city attorney's office will get mad at that, but they're the same thing. Um so we're gonna make sure that we use that budget amendment uh if it stays in uh for some good evidence based policymaking in the future, because we'll have an underlying understanding of across the Commonwealth what the costs are and what the FTEs are associated with these uh locally subsidized state employees. Um our third budget amendment was uh the Urban Area Security Initiative or UASI. Um this was only carried for us in the House, and there is a budget amendment in the House. We requested 2.2 million dollars per year each year for the biennium. The House included an amendment for 3.2 million per year for FY2027 and FY2028. Again, the Senate didn't have a budget amendment on this. We're working with our uh regional counterparts to make sure that this stays in, then we do get some funding for UASI. If you'll recall, this was national security related funding, uh regional funding.