BILLY SHIELDS: Delegate-elect, could you introduce yourself for us?

LINDSEY DOUGHERTY: My name is Lindsey Dougherty, and I ran and was recently elected to represent the 75th House of Delegates District.

And so in Virginia, that's the eastern part of Chesterfield, all of Hopewell City and then the northern part of Prince George County.

BILLY SHIEDLS: What are your top priorities for the next two years?

LINDSEY DOUGHERTY: I think accessibility and affordability of health care are top of mind.

It's an issue that's been a huge problem for my own family.

It's a huge issue for a lot of folks across my district.

And so just finding ways that we can make it more accessible and more affordable is top of mind.

Education, you know, funding is going to be a huge piece of it, but also making sure that we have special education protections in for kids, given all the chaos happening at the federal level, is another huge priority for me.

And then housing, accessibility and affordability, too.

So everything kind of revolves around this accessibility and affordability of a lot of different key pieces of things that families need.

BILLY SHIELDS: What's all the rage right now are data centers.

Recently, Google just announced this Project Peanut that's going to— that's slated to come online.

What's your take on the data centers?

LINDSEY DOUGHERTY: I think that we need to have more infrastructure in place around that, whether that be legislation to kind of guide that [and] protect communities.

Making sure that we are not putting undue burden on families and neighborhoods that have historically had these types of builds happen in and around their areas, and— but they don't see the benefit and actually end up bearing a lot of the brunt of the increased costs, increased negative environmental impacts.

And so, you know, we just need to be intentional and we need to have folks willing to have conversations so that we're able to still bring good quality jobs to the area, but also protect the families and the communities that live around these areas, so that there isn't that undue burden on them.

BILLY SHIELDS: Talk about affordable housing.

One of the things that's an economic driver in Chesterfield County is development.

Brings in a ton of money into the county and it's a relatively affluent county, although it's more diverse [than] I think a lot of people realize.

How do you thread that needle where it's, you're encouraging the right kind of development, but at the same time, you're allowing people who are low-income to move in and to work jobs and to thrive?

LINDSEY DOUGHERTY: Yeah, so I think that folks who work in communities deserve the opportunity to be able to live in the communities that they work, so that we're not having folks driving an hour or more each way to able to afford to live in a different community and then come to work in that community.

And so, part of the thing that I ran on, my opponent was one of the key people that removed proffers.

So, kind of, money that developers pay to help the, kind of, surrounding infrastructure that goes around housing developments.

So whether that be streets, whether that be schools, whether that be parks or libraries she removed that opportunity for funding for localities to kind of offset some of the issues that you see with development.

And so localities have had to get creative and sometimes they haven't been able to get creative depending on their tax bases, on being able to provide those improvements.

And so what we're seeing in Chesterfield specifically is, you know, these huge booms in residential development, whether that be apartments or single family homes.

But you're not seeing the same investment in street infrastructure.

So people are sitting in traffic for longer.

You're not seeing that investment in schools.

My daughter goes to an elementary school in Chester that was over capacity on day one in a brand new school.

And so we really need to have folks at the state level, at the local levels come together and come up with larger strategic planning opportunities that'll handle a bunch of these key pieces.

You know, bringing in housing development that fits a variety of different needs, but also trying to kind of keep those costs low and I'm very, very excited to roll up my sleeves and get to work on a lot of these problems that are facing the community.

BILLY SHIELDS: Your predecessor was in office for a while.

What are three things that you plan on doing differently or that you plan on undoing that were characteristic of her time in office?

LINDSEY DOUGHERTY: Yeah, so I think that the biggest piece of the conversations that I had at doors with voters over the last six years, this is the second time I've run for this seat, and so I've been building and activating this district for the better part of a decade at this point.

And so just kind of highlighting the differences and that I will not be a different person when I'm in front of you face to face, whether it be a community event or whether I'm at your door asking what your top priorities are, as opposed to what's happening in the legislature.

So, you're not going to have to worry about me saying one thing in the community, but then voting against that thing in the legislature.

And so whether that be against gun violence prevention, which is a huge, you know, key piece of a large part of my district that we need to have protections in, whether that be housing development, which is part of what her family benefited from personally as developers.

And so making sure that we just have somebody in this seat that can provide a better balance to the legislation and particularly the budget pieces that can help as many folks across my district as possible, but also across the commonwealth, too.

BILLY SHIELDS: This last election delivered what they call the trifecta.

You got the Senate, the House and the governorship are all run by the same party going forward.

Year one, what do you— You guys must be talking, what are you going to accomplish in year one?

LINDSEY DOUGHERTY: Yeah, so I think that, you know, there was a lot of potential life-saving legislation that have been approved from the legislative bodies over the last four years that have been vetoed by [a] different governor.

And so I think that, you know, we're going to see a lot of those same bills that had popular approval previously come back through and hopefully make it over the finish line without the vetoes.

But also, you know, starting to look at ways that we can additionally tackle things like affordability, health care access.

And so, you know, there are a lot of conversations going on.

Everybody is very excited to roll up their sleeves but also, you know, realizing that we're— we're going to be representing everybody across the commonwealth whether for us or not.

And so just making sure that that, those lines of communication are open so that, you know, people don't feel like they're left behind.

And making sure that we're creating a Virginia that works for everybody.

BILLY SHIELDS: Delegate-elect, thank you very much for your time.

We really appreciate it.