Issue Position: Promote government accountability and transparency

Issue Position

The General Assembly has taken steps in the right direction to reform our ethics laws. However, stronger reforms are required to restore the public's trust, including the adoption of the ethics amendments proposed by Governor McAuliffe, but not passed by the General Assembly. Working in local government for the last 15 years, I've operated under absolute gift prohibitions without thinking twice. It's about time we began to hold our elected lawmakers in Richmond to the same standards required of public servants.

Further, voters throughout Virginia have lost much of their confidence in the electoral process, and their concerns are justified in part due to the evident gerrymandering in districts across the commonwealth. Politicians have picked their own voters before voters have picked them. We must depoliticize the redistricting process, and bring it out into the open where the public has a voice. In the last year since I ran for the House of Delegates, I served as the Northern Virginia Chair for OneVirginia2021, a bipartisan organization advocating for an amendment to the Virginia Constitution that would change the way we do business and bring transparency to the drawing our districts. This is one of the fundamental policy goals that will define my success as a state senator, even if it means my being drawn out of my district in the future.

Source