But Northern Virginia residents may be less enthusiastic about another result: higher taxes for gas and real estate transactions, and the likelihood of additional hikes in local taxes on cigarettes, hotel stays and restaurant meals.

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Depending on their attitude toward unions, voters will be thrilled or disappointed that Northern Virginia cities and counties will now almost certainly allow collective bargaining for public employees, including teachers.

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The 2020 General Assembly session will go down as one of the most consequential in history. In charge of both chambers for the first time in a generation, Democrats pushed through liberal measures on a broad range of issues ranging from gun control and abortion rights to transit funding and the minimum wage.

It’s natural that top Northern Virginia elected officials welcomed the changes. The region has become a Democratic bastion and is home to most legislative leaders in both the House of Delegates and the Senate.

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The Democrats’ victories in the November elections have reversed the frustrating pattern in which Republican majorities in the rest of Virginia have controlled public policy and treated the prosperous Washington suburbs as an ATM to pay for priorities elsewhere.

“From a cash standpoint, we’re going to do better than in the past, because Northern Virginia for the first time has people in leadership [with majorities],” said Jeff C. McKay (D-At Large), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. “I expect us to do better on school funding, mental health support and human services.”

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McKay, the top elected official in the most populous jurisdiction in both the commonwealth and the greater Washington region, said Virginia is finally rewarding the region for its economic dynamism.

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“The recognition that you have to invest in Northern Virginia so that it can keep being the economic engine of Virginia is really important. Frankly, people realizing that is probably the number one thing we got out of the session,” McKay said.

There is still a bit of uncertainty about whether Gov. Ralph Northam (D) will try to amend details of some measures passed by the legislature. Fresh concerns about the economic effects of the coronavirus could prompt last-minute changes.

Still, the generally positive impact for Northern Virginia is assured, according to local officials and private analysts.

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“This year we asked for 50 different things, and we got a good chunk of them,” Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson (D) said.

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Wilson welcomed changes in school funding formulas that will provide extra help to students from low-income families and English-language learners, additional money to build the West End Transitway, and the authority to move a Confederate monument off public land.

“I feel guilty complaining about anything we didn’t get,” such as money for school construction, he said.

Ann B. Wheeler, chair of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, applauded extra funding for K-12 schools and higher education, noting that her county hosts two campuses for Northern Virginia Community College and one for George Mason University.

“The focus on the public education system is wonderful,” Wheeler (D-At Large) said.

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To help pay for roads and transit, the legislature restored $50 million a year of the $102 million diverted in 2018 from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority to pay for dedicated funding for Metro. That will help the region to move ahead more quickly on projects including widening Richmond Highway (Route 1) in Fairfax and adding bus rapid transit there, and widening and improving Route 28 in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William.

Part of the price is an increase in the tax on real estate transactions in Northern Virginia to 20 cents from 15 cents per $100 of sales price. In addition, the state gas tax will rise by 5 cents a gallon in each of the next two years, and then be indexed to inflation.

In a historic change, counties gained the same authority as cities and municipalities to increase or impose certain local taxes. Counties have relied primarily on property taxes for revenue.

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“The real issue here is equity,” McKay said. “It’s absurd that the tiny city of Alexandria [population: 159,000] has far more authority to implement taxes than Fairfax County, with 1.2 million people.”

McKay said he expected Fairfax supervisors would use their new authority to raise the cigarette tax to 40 cents from 30 cents a pack, and the hotel tax above its current level of 4 percent.

But he said “the giant in the room” is the county’s new power to impose a meals tax, beginning in 2022, without submitting it to public referendum. A 5 percent meals tax would raise about $130 million a year, compared to $2 million from the 10-cent hike in the cigarette levy, and $6 million for each one-percentage-point increase in the hotels tax.

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McKay said approving a meals tax would allow the county to reduce its property tax, but he said it would be done only after “a thorough conversation with the public,” because voters rejected a meals tax in a 2016 ballot measure.

Arlington’s meals tax was capped at 4 percent, and it will consider using its new power to raise it to 6 percent, according to County Board Chair Libby Garvey (D). She said it would raise $21 million, which would cover most of the $27 million gap between what the school system has requested and what the county has available.

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Local jurisdictions may also now allow unions representing teachers and other government employees to engage in collective bargaining — with a provision that strikes are not allowed.

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The pro-labor Democrats who lead the region’s jurisdictions hailed the change, as McKay, Wilson, Wheeler and Garvey all said they expected collective bargaining to be approved.

The officials said they have worked well with their employees on contract issues and do not expect collective bargaining to result in pay increases that strain local budgets.

“I don’t think [the teachers] would do it to the detriment of the county,” Wheeler said.

Fairfax Education Association President Kimberly Adams, whose union represents 3,700 teachers and support staff, said her focus in collective bargaining would be on improving working conditions, such as by reducing paperwork, and hiring more staff such as school nurses, counselors and social workers.

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But she added that “salary and benefit negotiations are typically something we’d look at,” and that the union wants to see support staff get “a living wage.”

Julie Coons, president of the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce, said there was a risk that collective bargaining would be costly.

“The concern there is that they would need to raise taxes to pay for ever-increasing costs of labor contracts,” she said.

Overall, however, Coons said area business leaders were satisfied with the legislature’s actions. The General Assembly left intact the state’s anti-union “right to work” law and agreed to raise the minimum wage more slowly than some Democrats sought.

“It was not ideal from our perspective, but I think there were some good compromises,” Coons said.

In a rare defeat for Dominion Energy, the state’s politically influential electric utility, Northern Virginia governments won expanded capacity to install solar panels on public facilities. Fairfax has been eager to add them at the Lorton landfill and other government sites.

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One disappointment for Northern Virginia in the session was limited help in addressing the need for affordable housing, officials said. Also, Garvey hopes to persuade Northam to veto or amend a bill that could allow private companies to deploy delivery robots weighing up to 500 pounds and traveling at 10 mph on sidewalks and roadways.