Statehouse One-Acts: Glenn’s Mojo Dojo Casa Arena Is Dead … Unless It’s Not
The actual important news is that the Virginia legislature has reached a budget agreement, but that's boring as hell
In any given year, Virginia’s is among first legislative sessions to call it quits (but especially in odd-numbered years, when the sessions are even shorter).
New Mexico and Utah have already adjourned sine die for the year, and another seven will wrap in the next week or so. (Several adjourn in April, and most of the rest that aren’t full-time do so sometime in May.)
In even-numbered years, the Virginia General Assembly session is a little bit longer to accommodate the creation of the commonwealth’s two-year budget.
And if Virginia’s fiscal plan for the coming biennium weren’t agreed on by the legislature by this weekend, lawmakers would have to go into overtime to get that worked out.
But General Assembly just announced its finalized budget agreement, so everyone can start their sine die partying early.
… except Glenn Youngkin, but we’ll get to that.
There was a possibility that the Democratic-majority legislature might wait to finalize the budget until the governor acted on a whole slew of bills by a constitutionally prescribed deadline of this Friday, March 8.
These bills reflect a slate of Democratic legislative priorities this year – from returning Virginia to the ERIC voter data maintenance and sharing program Youngkin’s administration quit last year to establishing marriage equality in state law and prohibiting legacy admissions at Virginia’s public universities.
But none of them quite rises to the level of Dems’ flagship legislation, like raising the state’s minimum wage, legalizing recreational cannabis sales, protecting reproductive rights, or establishing a Prescription Drug Affordability Board.
Virginia governors traditionally have 30 days to consider bills that pass both chambers of the legislature, but if measures hit his desk seven days or more before the end of the legislative session, a seven-day deadline applies.
So in a move that smacks of solid strategery, Democratic legislative leaders may have been testing Youngkin to see how flexible he’s willing to be before finalizing their version of the state’s budget.
Dems went ahead and finalized that arena-less budget on Thursday, so now we get to see if the governor either vetoes all of those bills in a fit of pique or signals that he’s willing to play … arena ball, if you will.
Something fun about this year is that it’ll be the very first time in his tenure as governor that Youngkin has had to take a stand on anything meaningful or potentially controversial.
It’s true! When it comes to reproductive rights, gun safety, healthcare affordability, recreational cannabis, and more, Youngkin hasn’t yet been forced to take a solid position.
… and before you go on about how Glenn took a stand against reproductive freedom with his big “15-week ban” push last year, remember: that was just rhetoric and advertising.
No pieces of abortion-related legislation have made it to his desk yet, so he’s never been put in the position of actually signing or vetoing them.
For the past two years, the then-GOP majority House was doing the dirty work of keeping Youngkin’s hands clean.
Bills that expand reproductive rights? House killed them.
Gun safety measures? House killed them.
Paid family medical leave? House killed it.
Youngkin was also saved from having to take stands on the issues motivating the Republican Party base – e.g. anti-trans bills, measures banning abortion, attempts to steal funding from public education and shunt it to private schools, and more – by the Democratic-majority state Senate, who killed all the gross stuff that game out of the GOP House.
… this isn’t to say he’s some SEEKRIT LIBRUL who wouldn’t let these measures become law. I absolutely believe he’d have signed off on most of them if he had to, but he’s grateful that his Republican compatriots in the House shielded him and allowed him to maintain his facade of general moderate-ness.
So now Youngkin will have to show Virginians who he really is.
But who Youngkin might be most of all right now is The Guy Who Really Wants To Build A Multi-Billion Dollar Arena In Northern Virginia To Steal The Wizards And The Caps From DC.
Enter state Sen. Louise Lucas, who, as both Senate President Pro Tem and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is arguably the most powerful lawmaker in Richmond.
One of two, for sure, the other being House Speaker Don Scott.
No I am not trying to start a fight
Lucas has already pretty much single-handedly killed three attempts to authorize the arena, first via standalone bills establishing the required “sports and entertainment authority” to issue the $1.5 billion in state-backed bonds to fund the project and diverting the state and local tax revenue generated by the sports complex to help repay that debt, and finally via the state budget.
Late Wednesday night (thank goodness I was waylaid and didn’t send a quickly outdated version of this out early yesterday evening like I’d planned – thanks for the impromptu phone call, Dad! But I think Pete is going to jail), Lucas announced that the budget committee had stripped the arena language from the budget proposal they’re sending to Youngkin.
Lucas wasn’t out on some anti-arena limb, though, and her decision to ruin Youngkin’s good time had broad support – including from some NoVA lawmakers.
But is Glenn’s sports and entertainment complex really dead? Will the Caps and Wizards stay in DC?
Don’t buy that arena-sized coffin just yet, folks.
As Speaker Scott, who’s remained fairly neutral-to-sorta-positive about the arena’s prospects, pointed out, “It’s not final until it’s final.”
And when the House Speaker says that, it means something.
In this case, it mostly means what smart observers figured would happen all along: Democrats are going to use the arena authorization language as a bargaining chip as Youngkin decides
Whether or not to sign off on all those progressive bills Dems are sending to his desk and
How much he hates Dems’ proposed two-year budget.
It’s easy to forget among all the hoopla, but Youngkin does want more than his Mojo Dojo Casa Arena.
He announced via his budget unveiling in December that he wants to cut taxes for the wealthiest Virginians and make up the difference with a sales tax increase that will disproportionately harm those in the lowest tax brackets.
While this Rich Guy’s rich buddies would surely toast him for years to come for lowering their taxes, it’s not exactly a “legacy”-making move.
Delivering a new sports arena to his rich buddy Ted Leonsis and bringing two professional sports teams to Virginia, however, is the stuff former governors’ dreams are made of.
Reportedly, the only part of Youngkin’s original tax proposal that survived in the version the legislature is sending to his desk is a sales tax on digital services, although the governor has said that he plans to reject his own idea unless it’s coupled with those income tax cuts.
While the legislature will adjourn as scheduled on Saturday, the politicking will be far from done.
The governor will have 30 days after the General Assembly adjourns to act on the state budget and other legislation Democrats send to his desk.
And then on April 17, the legislature will reconvene to consider the governor’s amendments and vetoes.
So over the course of that 30-day window, Youngkin will have the opportunity to engage in some serious horse-trading.
Does he want to block a minimum wage hike and recreational cannabis sales more than he wants his arena?
Is he willing to give Democrats everything they want in the state budget – a LOT of which involves improved school funding, which his own proposed budget extremely does not – if they agree to add in language authorizing the arena sports and entertainment authority?
Mechanically, ways Youngkin could resurrect his Mojo Dojo Casa Arena include:
Amending the state budget to add in the language before he returns it to them. The legislature would then either approve or reject the amendment, and then Youngkin would either have to sign the budget or veto the whole damn thing over his pet project.
Calling a whole-ass special session to consider a standalone bill establishing the sports and entertainment authority necessary to move the arena project forward.
The first course is definitely Plan A, and it’s also the most potentially complicated. Virginia governors have line-item veto authority over budget items, so Youngkin could threaten to wreak all kinds of havoc on Democrats’ spending plans unless they give him his precious arena.
And, while Democrats have majority control of both chambers, they don’t have the supermajorities needed to overturn a gubernatorial veto (although there are potential procedural gimmicks around this).
NB: While plenty of Republicans also dislike the arena plan, it seems unlikely they’d be willing to side with Dems and give them a big budget win without extracting several pounds of flesh of their own. But you never know!
Reportedly, the governor has “made clear” he’s willing to play ball with Democrats on their priorities in exchange for his Mojo Dojo Casa Arena, but the extent to which he’s willing to be flexible remains shrouded in political mystery.
If Youngkin signs those flagship Democratic priorities into law (or just lets them become law without his signature) – raising the minimum wage, banning assault rifles, legalizing the sale of recreational weed, and expanding abortion protections, specifically – and gives Lucas the Hampton Roads toll relief she’s been after, then it’s quite possible that Dems will sign off on an arena amendment to the state budget.
Perhaps the governor will agree to some, but not all, of these measures.
Perhaps he and the Democratic-majority legislature will reach meaningful compromise.
Or maybe Youngin will try to play hardball – i.e., blocking passage of the state budget until he gets his Mojo Dojo Casa Arena.
That last one seems unlikely, just because it’d be politically moronic.
If a new state budget isn’t passed by the start of the next fiscal year on July 1, Virginia’s government shuts down. No ifs, ands, CRs, or buts.
And if Youngkin refuses to sign a state budget because it doesn’t have his precious arena in it, he’ll get all of the blame for the state government shutdown.
… not that it matters as much as it could; after all, like all Virginia governors, he can’t run for reelection.
But it would look really, really bad for Republicans generally for the first state government shutdown in Virginia’s history to be on Youngkin’s watch.
While he doesn’t have to worry about reelection, his fellow GOPers in the legislature very much do, and they would be pretty pretty upset about the attendant guilt by party association.
Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that even though Virginia’s legislative session is almost over, it’s not really OVER over.
And whatever side you’re on in the Glenn’s Mojo Dojo Casa Arena debate, the issue is far from actually settled.
Stay tuned!