Tony Wilt is the incumbent candidate running to represent Virginia’s 34th District, which is comprised of the city of Harrisonburg and part of Rockingham County. A republican, Wilt has represented the district in Virginia’s House of Delegates since he was first elected in 2010. WMRA’s Calvin Pynn asked Wilt what he’s learned in his 15 years as Delegate.
Tony Wilt: Richmond has a way of throwing some curves, so you never quite know what’s around the corner. But we’ve adapted well. We’ve learned a lot of things over the years. Not everything works as we often think it does. You know, coming from a private sector
background, we’re used to, you know: "bing, bang, boom, making things happen and things happen on our schedule." Well, it doesn’t always happen like that in Richmond, as I’m sure you’ve seen. But a thing that I’ve learned, Calvin, is that’s a good thing. It really is, because what we’re doing in Richmond, our citizens depend on. Okay, we’re making decisions that affect everyone’s lives. And it’s very good that we take our time and go through the processes, pick each piece of legislation apart, and make sure at the end that it’s the best final product for our citizens.
WMRA: With this current campaign, could you walk me through some of the issues that prioritizing, that you’re focusing on, and what you’re hearing from your constituents in terms of what they want to see happen?
Wilt: The key issues that I’ve seen and that I’m hearing from our citizens, everyone across the board, and I would bet, if I was a betting man, I’d say that it’s important to everyone in the state of Virginia, is the cost of living. We’ve seen what’s happened in our grocery bills, health care bills, housing bills, energy bills, you name it. Everything’s gone up, and some have gone up at a higher rate, faster rate, and so that’s number one. That’s what’s really on a lot of people’s radars. Another thing that people talk to me about are schools, safe schools and safe communities, and that’s the key issues that I’ve seen. I’ve seen what’s happened in our grocery bills, health care bills, housing bills, energy bills, you name it. Everything’s gone up and some have gone up at a higher rate, faster rate, and so that’s number one. That’s what’s really on a lot of people’s radars. That’s important to them, obviously. A lot of folks here have children and, you know, they want to know that they’re going to be safe in school and they want to know that they’re going to get a good education when they’re there.
WMRA: Yeah, actually, I’d like to expand some on the education piece. Are there any specific things like that you’re that you that you would want to focus on in order to improve education at the policy level.
Wilt: Yeah, one of the things on the safety front. Yeah, we’ll address that first. I worked hard to try to get some additional funding for school resource officers, try to bring those in. I know there’s a lot of debate and we won’t get into it here on the issue of guns. But at the end of the day, you know, if we’re if if that’s not going to get settled. One thing that we positively can do is more school resource officers and school safety. I remember back when we started putting money into those things. So I don’t know the last time you were in a school, but you go, you check in and it’s very secure. Then you got to go through the office, you know, those processes. And I’m proud to say the state, in a bipartisan fashion, addressed that need. We saw that we needed to bring more resources to secure our schools. And I think resource officers, hands down, are a huge tool to be used in our schools, just to bring students and parents a greater level of security and a feeling that they’re safe and can be in that environment and are protected. It’s on the education front. Now, I got to be clear. I’m not on the education committee.
WMRA: Right. Yeah.
Wilt: That’s not my bail wick necessarily, but I do see the legislation after it’s gone through much of the subcommittee and committee process. On the education front, there’s not a question that we really took a hit back when COVID happened, okay? We all saw what happened. Our schools got shut down and so forth. But I’ll say, I’ve got to say, it disappointed me that the administration at that time wasn’t more proactive in getting our kids back into school. It was just like, and I realized we didn’t know what we didn’t know. But all the experts, all the experts said, kids, this is not a good learning environment for our children to be out of class, out of touch with one another, with their peers, the teachers, and that school environment. I mean, that in itself fosters a good learning environment, and we took that away from them. And our kids suffered, and the testing and so forth showed what happened there. And so I was very disappointed at that time that, you know, more wasn’t done sooner to help remediate what we’re dealing with at
that time. But going for, again, it’s one of those things when you’re there in the General
Assembly, you play the hand you’re dealt. And so I was proud to sponsor a couple pieces of legislation that got more school counselors in our schools because our children, the experts, again, teachers and folks like that, you know, that I spoke to said, wow, this is a real need. We need more counselors in our schools. And so we had a couple pieces of legislation to get counselors in the school and mental health professionals, get them in there because that was a huge need as well. And so that was one piece of the puzzle. And hopefully it’s helping. And the, I’m proud of the work that the governor’s done on that front, on the education front, because there was a, there was a sense. It wasn’t a sense. It was actual doing that we were lessening the requirements for the children. I’m not sure who we thought that was serving, but it wasn’t serving the children.
WMRA: You mean like in terms of, like, SOLs?
Wilt: Yes. Testing actual outcomes. And I’ve been really proud and impressed of the work that Governor Youngkin’s done since he came into office that put more emphasis on that, raising the standards, trying to give the children the tools that they need, trying to give the teachers the tools they need, the schools, to get our kids back on track and bring those standards back up. And we’re slowly climbing out of that. We’re seeing success.
WMRA: So I was going back through. You had spoken with one of my colleagues, Bridget Manley, a while back, well, back during the summer. And one of the things that you also touched on about some efforts towards the continued expansion of I-81. Would you be able to elaborate on any of that or share what you’ve been doing to address issues on I-81?
Wilt: Yeah, I get it. And that’s another, I appreciate that question, Calvin. That’s another one of those things in district that are very, it’s very important to people. The previous years that I’ve been in General Assembly, well, I just, it was really heart-wrenching to hear the stories of lives lost and damage done and the lost time, people sitting for hours in traffic.
WMRA: And the economic hit too, I would say, probably.
Wilt: It was huge. It was huge. I don’t know if you realize, but like 41% of the truck traffic in Virginia travels I-81. And so that played into the formula. Proud to be instrumental. Didn’t carry the legislation, but I had a seat at the table to help formulate a fix to get us going. It was time to quit kicking the can down the road. And so that’s where the I-81 initiative came from. And while we’re seeing a little bit around here, just travel south towards down into Augusta County and you see what the efforts are there. And it’s coming this way. That’s the good news. I say that till people start, you know, going through the orange cones and the waiting and squeezing you down to one lane and say, what’s going on? But but citizens know citizens know that that’s what it’s going to take to improve I-81. And I’m not sure what you’re alluding to earlier about your question. But I’ll tell you that I’ve actively been involved in informal discussions to try to continue the improvement of I-81. From one end to the other. It’s it’s not good because if we’re not careful. Well, what we’ve seen years ago, the advancements down around Fairfield, coming out on 81, coming up that-a-way, it sometimes can be a bottleneck. Oh, yeah. And so, okay, so we fixed the problem here. We fixed it there, but we’ve shifted the problem, okay? And so that’s what we have. We have to be forward-looking in how we can come up with fixes for I-81 from one end to the other. I will tell you that it’s not always fell on welcome ears. The powers that be realize primarily take care of what you got. We’ve got our deal that we’re working on now. VDOT did a great job identifying the spots that needed improvement and where those are, what it’s going to cost. So here’s what you’re going to get to do that. Take care of that, and then we’ll worry about the rest of it. So, yeah, I get it. understand. I was talking to someone the other day, I forget what the issue was, but it had to do with public funding on anything. While citizens like to see improvements, whatever, in schools, in the roads, what have you, but they’re very leery of their money being taken in the form of taxes, what have you, taken now for an improvement that may be 10, 20 years down the road. It's got to be a balance. So I can see the other side of the argument that: "hey, fix what you got now, and then we’ll look at the rest of it at another time." So the good news is we’re seeing great progress south of us, and it’s coming this away. And yeah, we’ll try to work out the rest in the future.
WMRA: If you are reelected, are there any pieces of legislation that you’re hoping to introduce that you’re thinking about right now that you’d be able to talk about?
Wilt: Sure. Yeah. And I believe your question is that: did you try something last time and it didn’t work? You’re going to give it another whirl? (laughs)
WMRA: That’s part of it, yeah. (laughs)
Wilt: Sure. And that’s a great question, Calvin. And there are, again, I mentioned earlier about an idea that I looked at with a school security grant expansion, looking at that, but it costs money. And I’m one person, there’s 139 other legislators in Richmond, and very few of us actually directly touch the budget. That comes down to the budget process, the conferees and so forth. And so we come out with the best product. Sometimes you get what you’re asking for, and sometimes you don’t. The year before, I was fortunate enough to get money, some money for JMU, looking at the nursing program and so forth. I got money for the public defender’s office here in Harrisonburg, serving Harrisonburg and Rockingham County. And that was a good year. But this… This past year. And I don’t know, maybe the conferees look at us, he got that last year, so we’re going to trim him back a little. I don’t know. But the point I want folks to understand is just not everybody gets what they want. It’s a great idea. We all want what we want for our districts. But yeah, you take it as it comes. And that’s an advantage, I feel, Calvin, for me, my years of being in Richmond. I’ve proven myself as being kind of steady as she goes, very pragmatic. I work across the aisle. And if your legislation’s bad, I’m open to trying to make it better. But if it’s just a bad legislation, I’m going to tell you. And that’s how I approach my Democratic colleagues and my Republican colleagues. It’s what’s best for the citizens of Virginia. And I’ve taken that approach, you know, looking at efforts that I’ve attempted. In the past, this was an idea that came here locally was the discharge information sharing to protect students without, I don’t know how much I go into detail about that, but our school, if we have a child that’s removed from school, okay, for some pretty serious reasons, we don’t do that lightly. It’s not done lightly. But if that student is taken to a facility somewhere, and then what that facility is designed to do, how to help that student, and then that’s accomplished, and that student then is to come back and be reintroduced into the, the school system should know that. Another thing that I’ve worked on, I haven’t quite gotten there yet, is the flexibility in the disability community waiver. You know, if you’re familiar with the waiver system. Well, sometimes there’s different stages of waivers. And sometimes, all right, so there’s so many waivers. in this category that’s allocated, but they don’t all get used. So anyways, to get the waiver that’s not being used, to be able to transfer that over into another waiver. And some folks get what we’re trying to do and some don’t and are afraid: "well, so then what happens over here if the one’s in the first category, now suddenly when you didn’t have a use, now you have a use, well, you’ve already traded it off somewhere?" So anyways, I still think it’s a good concept, but sometimes these ideas take several sessions to get them across the finish line.
WMRA: You’re about to end your 15th year as Delegate. What is it that keeps you running, keeps you coming back?
Wilt: That’s a great question. And I tell people all the time is I enjoy the legislative process, but I got to be honest, the best part of the job is constituent services. Yeah. I’ve got to, not bragging, it’s just, it’s part of the job, but it’s so- filling to have individuals that come to us with a problem and we’re able to go to work for them. It may involve an agency, one of the state agencies or what have you. And we’re able to go to work on that and get them a solution. But yeah, the personal connection. I tell people my door has always been, I’m your personal town hall.
WMRA: Tony Wilt, thank you so much for joining us.
Wilt: Yeah, thank you for your time and your interest and call anytime.
