First meeting held for House Emergency committee on impacts of federal layoffs

The Virginia General Assembly finished up its regular session over the weekend, but a new committee set up to monitor and assess the impact of massive cuts to the federal workforce got to work Saturday morning. (committee page)

Don Scott, Speaker of the House of Delegates, formed the bi-partisan committee earlier this month as the Trump administration’s fast-pace firings of federal employees continued to mount.

“Things are moving rather quickly at the federal level and so we did not want to lose this opportunity while we were still in Richmond to be able to get together and do the very important work of this committee,” said Delegate David Bulova (D-11), the committee’s chair.

Bulova said people who work for the federal government provide services to 335 million Americans, both urban and rural.

“For instance, broadband deployment in the rural areas, support for family farms and rural economic development initiatives, are all state and federal partnerships,” Bulova said.

He said the scope of the cuts will have a ripple effect across Virginia, and acknowledged that the House of Delegates has no direct control over the cuts being proposed and implemented by the federal executive, but Article 10 of the Virginia Constitution requires a balanced budget each year.

“And likewise, we are each and every one of us up here fiercely protective of our AAA bond rating,” Bulova said.

Bulova said the committee also has a responsibility to help people whose jobs are being cut.

The first speaker before the committee was Clark Mercer, the executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. That’s similar to the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission.

“We represent and work with local governments in Northern Virginia, the District and suburban Maryland, everything from Loudoun and Prince William up to the District of Columbia and suburban Maryland,” Mercer said. “So your chairs of board of Supervisors, your mayors, and you’ve got legislative and executive branch serving on our board.”

Mercer said his agency coordinates 24 public safety programs including mutual aid agreements, clean water programs, transportation planning, procurement on behalf of local government, and many other programs.

Mercer said there are around 400,000 federal government workers in the national capital region, or about 17 percent of the workforce. That number is a lot lower in the Charlottesville metropolitan area where 3.4 percent of the workforce is federal.ll

He said one of the stated aims of the unofficial Department of Governmental Efficiency being run by unelected billionaire Elon Musk is to reduce the federal workforce by 75 percent. If that occurs, the unemployment rate could spike to 9.6 percent up from a baseline figure of 2.8 percent.

“I would note that at the height of COVID in the [COG] region it was 9.4 percent,” Mercer said.

Mercer said the Trump administration also seeks to cut programs such as SNAP and Medicaid. The Defense Department wants to cut 40 percent of its budget. Federal formulas for transportation are being slated to change to favor states with higher birth and marriage rates.

Mercer advised the committee to continue to monitor the exact number of personnel to be cut.

“The numbers coming out of the Office of Personnel Management just are not clean and crisp,” Mercer said. “There’s not as much transparency as to who is being laid off, [who is being] bought out and what their skill sets are.”

Mercer said a goal should be to find jobs for those who have been put out of work by the executive branch of the government. For instance, Fairfax County has put together a website on this topic. Another needs to be to identify state jobs that are funded with federal money and find ways to prevent them from being cut.

The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service also provided analysis of the federal workforce in Virginia and demographers estimate that at least 25,000 employees moved to other parts of the Commonwealth during the pandemic.

“There are some parts of rural Virginia where they actually saw some significant increases in federal workforce so we’ll have to see how that plays out potentially,” Eric Scorsone, executive director of the Weldon Cooper Center.

The Weldon Cooper Center recently began producing a quarterly economic forecast and the effects of cuts will begin to be felt when the next version comes out in April.

The Committee next heard from Mitch Melis, the Commissioner of the Virginia Employment Commission. He explained how unemployment insurance works.

“The program is funded solely through employer paid taxes, not by employees,” Melis said. “The financial assistance provided is temporary while they seek and pursue alternative work.”

Individuals have to demonstrate on a weekly basis that they are seeking employment. When the federal government fires workers, the federal government reimburses the Virginia Employment Commission. So far, claims have not been high.

“As of [February 22] we have less than 300 initial claims for unemployment insurance filed since February 1 by separated employees of a federal agency,” Melis said, adding that he estimates around 120 claims by contractors who have been laid off.

The VEC has also set up a special page regarding federal workers.

Delegate Marcus Simon (D-13) said that much of the correspondence between new federal leaders and workers may have some of those severed employees feeling they are ineligible for benefits.

“So the ‘fork in the road’ , these options, these buyouts and so forth, how are we going to distinguish between a voluntary resignation if it wasn’t really voluntary?” Simon asked. “So if somebody says, I’m going to take the buyout, I’m going to take the fork, does that mean they’re now, you know, voluntary, voluntarily unemployed, or would they be treated differently?”

Melis said anyone who feels they are eligible for unemployment insurance should reach out to the VEC.

“The voluntary resignation aspect, you know, we would, we would evaluate what documents the individual has,” Melis said. “Part of this is simply looking at what are they provided with. I don’t know for sure what 75,000 people received the same exact document. Did 10,000 receive something slightly different? I think that’s, that’s where we are on that. On the voluntary resignation. If someone elected to not be there, on a general sense without any other information, they would probably not qualify if they elected.”

The maximum amount someone can receive through unemployment is $378 a week for 26 weeks, no matter what their salary had been.

Melis said that many severed employees continue to be paid, but much of that information is anecdotal at this time.

I’ll have more from this meeting in the next edition of the newsletter. If you want to see the presentations and see the rest now, take a look here.

Before you go: This post was originally published in the February 24, 2025 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement, a newsletter powered by Substack since July 2020. The idea is to get as many stories out as possible each day, and then some of the material ends up here. Sometimes stories are posted here first. All of this is an experiment powered by Town Crier Productions, currently a one-person company that seeks to be as prolific as possible.