I'm going to go ahead and get started. Hey folks, we'll go ahead and get started. Can you do that? Yes, that's County Executive. Economic initiatives committee meeting will come to order. First off, thank you all very much for being here and I guess some ways having to do with this committee another time obviously on circumstances that none of us want. But the opening of this is just first off we are meeting today. It's a follow on to our previous meeting. And our last meeting was on March 25th, 2025, and just wanted to see if there were any changes in the meeting notes. Here in and seeing no changes. I'll now just go to the fact that we, this is really trying to address the ongoing issues we have with what's happening in, effectively in the country, but especially for federal employees and contractors. And I just saw a little bit earlier today where the Supreme Court had said that the 16,000 I think was, 18,000, probationary employees that were allowed, enabled to go back to work of NAB told, nope, the Supreme Court is not going to let you do that. So this situation is evolving by the moment and we all recognize that that's incredibly difficult. And you add to that all of the, the Trump taxes with respect to tariffs and what that's doing and affecting the economy. We've got lots of issues, lots of moving parts. And our role is to try to read those tea leaves as best we can. And to do that, we've got some amazing folks here who have been part of our community and part of our economic development authority and part of our Department of Economic Initiatives. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca and I have her kind of introduce the segment. We're going to do the chairman first, but he's not here yet. So we're going to do the flip a little bit and go to the report out of the, I'm sorry, the federal reductions economic initiative impact analysis first. And then we'll move on back to the chairman's result remarks when he gets here so Rebecca thank you. Thanks Rebecca Maudry Department of Economic Initiatives. I think we'll move straight over to the economic impact analysis. Let the numbers speak for themselves. We're also very happy to have David Hunn from the Skillsource Group here to provide some information, some perspective on really what's going on on the ground for workers. And then as you see on your agenda, we anticipate Congressman Byer joining us via phone later in the meeting. So when he joins us, we'll probably pause in the presentations and open it up for his remarks and then continue on in the agenda. So, Steven, please. Thank you very much, Rebecca. And I just want to thank the Board for the opportunity to come here and present latest updates we have in this ever evolving situation. At the March 11th committee meeting, I mentioned that we were working on an economic impact study. We engage a consultant. It's working through that. And I promise we'd have the results of that study. So I'll be presenting those today. But first, I just wanted to give a refresher as, I think it's important to put all this information in the situation to context. As the latest Census Bureau statistics present, there are already thousand residents in Fairfax County who are employed by the federal government and that represents about 13% of our resident workforce here. We also continue to monitor several facets of the reductions and how they're impacting our ecosystem not only on a national level, but try to bring it down to regional and local level as well as it relates to the workforce reductions, federal contracting and real estate. On the workforce side, you'll see that we have that figure at 14,000 or a little over 14,000 for federal employees' separations. We're working off the BLS data, the Bureau Labor Statistics data, which will lag. They did just release their latest numbers that account for March separations. While we do know that that number is an underrepresentation of where the situation is now, and in fact, what Supervisor Stork was mentioning before about the Supreme Court decision. I'll just pump up that number and what we're hearing from the Department of Health and Human Services and veterans affairs about Massa layoffs of their respective workforce. More recently, last month when I presented and mentioned that we did not see any more notice or layoff events in Fairfax County, that situation has since changed. We've seen two announcements as it relates to Fairfax County based employers That'll be depicted on the next slide but that's that relates to the federal contract work that that has been tied to some of those agencies that have seen mass reductions as you can see there have been 86 contractors that are based in Fairfax County that I have seen 149 unique countries. As you can see, there have been 86 contractors that are based in Fairfax County that have seen 149 unique contract cancellations. So when we're talking about what the ripple effect, you know, hear me use that term later, but when we're talking about the ripple effect, the reduce in that workforce and that size of that scope and how it relates to the contractors and work. That number is now being reflected in these more notices that we're starting to see. On the real estate side, nothing has really changed on that front since last month. There were the two least cancellations. There's over 650 across the US, but so far we have not seen much exposure in that way. And I highlighted the two ordinances in Fairfax County based employers but also have the rest of Northern Virginia as a relates to federal government. The latest being at MITRE with over 400 employees were they provided that notice at the end of last week. And they had contracts that were tied to IRS, FEMA, DHS, and many others that have seen those reductions. So they were able to speak and tie it to that data and those layoffs there. And so in February, we engaged a consultant as a senior economist at strategic impact advisors to take a look at the federal government reductions. And as I mentioned before, this is ever evolving. So the best way we thought we'd approach this is to have and look at three various scenarios, a 10, 20 and 30% reduction. So we understand it. The target for the reduction from the federal government workforce is coming in around 15%. So that would be looked at as a sort of right around that 20% figure as a middle case. We also because of the dense concentration of government contractors here in Fairfax County, want to make sure we were capturing the impact using a study that was released by Brookings Institute in January 2025. They attributed about a 2.4-a government contractor per federal employee ratio. So we baked that into the information. We have those two inputs to make sure that we could understand how that would have an outsize impact on our economy. The best way I can put those scenario reductions at 10, 20 and 30 is almost a worst case scenario for each of those situations. The 10%, 20%, 30%, because it assumes that workforce wants, and it is laid off for, is separated from its job, does not come back to the workforce. And we understand that's not really how, how our ecosystem works, there's employees that are re-employed, and there's some washing that figure. So just to keep that in mind on how that economic impact model runs. Because of the more of the certainty and the tying back to the Census Bureau of Figures that counter national security employment and the concentration that we have here in Fairfax County We focus on resident employment and also given their consumer spend spending at home on personal services and how that would Impact our economy and then the model uses Census Bureau local tax information. So it is able to account for our county But you'll see projections on impacts on tax revenues at both the state and local level. So first, we're looking at the three scenarios for federal civil service jobs and how it would relate to those government contractors. Just point out at the 20% level, you can see that figures close to 57,000 potential job losses. That would account for 9% of our total workforce. And just to put that in context, at the height of the pandemic, COVID-19, our peak unemployment rate was 10.3%. So if you take our current unemployment rate, which is around 2.7% and added that in there, that would cross that peak that we observed during that time, that's just in that 20% scenario. But we also have to consider what happens when not only those federal employees, but the government contractors lose their job and how that impacts the the businesses they work with and how that impacts their spending at home, personal services, going to the dentist, you know, shopping as it's done in the county and other services. So this is what we're looking at from a ripple effect. So all in all, if there was a 20% reduction in the federal workforce, we would expect to see a reduction in our resident workforce of over 82,000, which would put that number above 13%, which we have never seen here in the county. And then you take the job reduction and you can apply wages, which includes benefits. And you can see that number at over 11 billion. And then the total output lost the three different scenarios, which is a way of looking at the productivity of our current workforce and what those reductions would mean. And just to put it in context, that 20% figure would represent about 6% of our GDP. And we saw a GDP growth year over year, about 9%. The last time we saw a reduction in GDP figures was 2020 to 2019, or 2019 to 2020, which was a 0.1% reduction in the GDP year over year. So really have not seen that pull back. Yeah, even looking at situations like sequestration where the GDP growth did not get below zero. And then as it relates to tax revenue, these numbers certainly speak for itself, but there's various taxes that are rolled up into this figure and it's almost applied to an employee by employee basis looking at the industries that these workers will be leaving and how that impacts the tax revenue that they provide and then just to wrap this up. We also, it's in the report but we also have the federal tax numbers which I can supply later time. But with that, you know, I'll close out my presentation and open up the floor. Okay. Thank you, thank you very much. We're going to do questions on this and then we'll shift back to Chairman and having him provide us an update with what the state's doing. Go ahead. Thank you. Yep. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Steven, in a team great presentation, as always, so I've come to expect from you. Extremely timely, I think this is extremely helpful as we, at least myself, and I'm sure others have constituents who are calling or emailing, saying, what's happening, right? And there's so much going on every day. And like the chairman said, you know, things are happening at, you know, in every moment, you know, you just mentioned something that just happened today. A reference something that happened today. And so these are really good points and good data for us, or at least for me, to kind of understand and be able to explain to our constituents who are impacted by this or seeing this on TV and worried about their neighbors, their family themselves or spouses. So I just want to say thank you for this very useful and timely information. Thank you, Mr. Raza Manus. Two I walked. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Slide three and four, I think it is, shows the worn notices. I'm just wondering, I think it's important for people to understand the businesses that have to submit the worn notices and those that don't because it gives kind of a limited picture of what's taking place. So maybe you could kind of talk through that. And I was on slide three, the war notices for federal employees. Maybe you can talk through the circumstances under which I think I'm understanding it correctly. Two war notices for 471 federal employees and what circumstances the federal agency have to submit war notices or provide war notices. Well, I will say yeah, thank you for that question. Supervisor Walkinshall first to address the war notices companies with a workforce over 100 100 are like they're required to report to the state those upcoming layoff events. So you can see in the slide when they know and then when the actual impact will be there where they plan to lay off. So it's a smaller contractor that's a subcontractor to LIDOS or MITRE or with USAID is not required to submit more notices? No, they're not in fact out of those 149 contract cancellations, 57% of those were for small businesses. That was certainly and as we all know, an extremely large majority of our business ecosystem are considered small businesses. So that is an important distinction to point out. And then on the workforce side, well, like not just as federal workforce, but those are for those private sectors, not applied. I don't know what for. But thank you for the perlook of that distinction. Okay. Thank you. A question for me, I guess, is we have, we had this presentation a few weeks ago. Part of it is we know that there's every few weeks we'll get a little bit more information in the last time. What is your sense of how much, the quality information we have now versus what we'll know in a month or two or three? Any sense of how you see this playing out? Thank you for that question, Supervisor Stork. So in mid-April, we'll see the unemployment rate that's reported for February, so that'll give a little bit of a clear picture. even then that's still You know mid-February numbers. Let's call it think not until June Will we see really how this is playing out on the county level based upon the unemployment rate? We are tracking the At least at the state level the jobless claims Which are elevated but had not since spiked yet. I think they're in 2024, they hung around the 15,000 level and now they're around 18,000. So, three thousand level increase year over year. But really, I think that's important to know is that a lot of this information will lag a little bit before we get those exact numbers. But also because of the how imperative it was to look at these scenarios from the consultant really gives us a picture of if this did happen and we can even look at it at a per 1,000 employee basis or per employee basis of how that would impact our economy. To us, Patrick, I go on out. I can follow. No, thank you. And clearly not as an immediate maybe an impact as we're seeing here in both the federal and then contractor. Do we have a formula or is there a way that some of these consultants can help look at the larger effects of these job cuts for service sector and other non-official federal contract employees, something about the larger economy and our other small business and workforce? Thank you for that question, Supervisor Paul Jack. We can certainly provide more context around that. I will say that ripple effect slide really shows that difference in how the arrest of the economy will be impacted. If you think about the government, contract or reductions, when you're tying that to an industry, it's our largest industry. So those professional, scientific and technical services. So we do know how one impacts that industry. But then what happens with the remainder of our economy, those that are maybe in a personal service or maybe a combination of food services, that's considered in that ripple effect. It will essentially be the difference between the federal employee plus government contractor and the rest of that ripple. Okay, so that should be entirely the report. Okay, thank you. Steven, we, the data has been presented so far. You talked about a 15% is kind of just in general to keep our eye on that. What would you see or what should we be looking for sensitive to that would cause that in your eyes to be higher or dramatically, higher or dramatically lower? I think one thing that we would observe is an increase in reductions in defense, homeland security, and anything around homeland security in our area because this market is so heavily weighted in those agencies. So far, the percentage is for defense and homeland security, national security is fairly low as far as the reduction targets that those agencies have indicated that they will try to achieve. But if that were to increase for any reason, I think that would tip us into, you know, could tip us past the higher end of this scenario or put us more squarely in that range. Thank you. I would say just looking at this impact particularly on the lives and the individuals as substantial obviously on our impact on our tax revenue would be substantial. And one that we're going to I guess have to keep monitoring and looking to see if get these T-leaves to be a little bit clear for us. We have, because we're, as we all know, we're coming up on our budget approval about mid-May and that's we're going to want to be, I know very careful, cautious about where that's going to leave us at that point in time. So if there's no other questions on this, particularly say, okay, I'm sorry. Sue Vreselowski, your health reanup I apologize. Not to worry. I was gonna say the numbers are very somber and sobering. It's pretty significant when you look at the job loss numbers and I'll say as a person who worked in economic development and used to create jobs in Fairfax County, That's a lot of jobs to be recreating in Fairfax County. So we've got our work ahead. And then looking at the tax revenue impacts too, just thinking about the tax rate, how we'd have to replace this loss at 10%, it's a three cents, at 20%, it's almost six cents and at 30%, it's 10 cents. So that's a very significant kind of lift that we'd have to look at if we were to try to replace this through the tax rate. So obviously we're not suggesting that that's going to be done. Just making the point that that gives us a frame of reference around what this impact would be. The question I wanted to ask is thinking about where we are right now at the EDA as it relates to kind of our prospecting, so we're bringing in kind of prospects and announcements. What's been the change with our numbers as a result of this timing with the federal government. Have we seen a difference as it relates to both prospects and announcements as of the last few months? Yeah, I'll let Stephen fill in some of the details. By the way, I'm Alex. I'm some of the executive vice president at the Fairfax County Economics Development Authority. And I would just say that right now, we're actually seeing an increase in activity, probably because people are wanting to try to get ahead of this as much as they can. There's less certainty, essentially, by the day and things are still changing. So to the extent that they can anchor back into what they knew, they are trying to do that and push their projects forward sooner. Okay. And so that's manifest in office leasing, it's manifest in land deals, it's manifest in larger projects that could come our way if we're successful in the competition for them that could be really great projects for us. Though I think that that's kind of coming from a place of plans that were made before, let's say February of this year, and then moving forward, it's less predictable, right? So I don't know if Steve, you have data on office touring and things like that. Yeah, and now thank you for that question, Supervisor Laske. I will just say that, you know, it was been at the EDA and coming up in close to 10 years and we all know the pandemic and certainly it's impacts on the number of activity. My team sees all of the questions or inquiries, site selection, they all come across my desk. from the beginning of to now, I've been seeing levels of this since before the pandemic. So the activity has been higher, which is probably saying, but Tallyx's point, what's the, what is that attributed to certainly a question worth exploring. No, thank you. That's helpful. And I'll say maybe to some degree it might have been thought. It might have been the other way. It's kind of counterintuitive. But to the point that you made, Alex, it makes perfect sense. People are trying to get in there and close these things as quickly as they can. Thank you. Can I add one more point onto that, which I think is kind of interesting. So we're back in the Department of Economic Initiates. As you know, we have the Fairfax Corsite. It was about starting and growing a business, particularly focused on small businesses. And we actually have seen an increase in traffic to the Fairfax Corsite. We also launched from Fed to Founder page. And there's been movement on that. It can be attributed to a lot of different factors that there's an increase in webpage views and what page folks are looking at. But it is just another data point that there's movement, I would say, in the market and folks are probably looking at different opportunities. Mr. Chairman, on that point, if I could ask, as a follow-up, just thinking about the Accelerate Breakfast. So I'm understanding, too, that there's been some growth in it as it relates to both attendees and the number of companies. Could you speak to that,? Yes, I'm gonna have to look to my colleagues for the specific numbers, but every accelerate breakfast that we've had, which again is an opportunity for problem-staying startup firms in the region to pitch to a group of investors and business partners. We've seen an increase in every, in every breakfast in applicants. I think the last one was maybe even up to 100 applicants for five slots. This is also the case comparatively that we've seen for the Fairfax Founders Fund, which again is a grant program for promising startup firms. And every round, essentially, that we've had at the Fairfax Founders Fund, we've seen an increase in grant applications. That is actually open right now through, let me look at James, April 21st. So we're expecting a lot of applications to come in. it's extremely important that we're we're supporting those companies and keeping those companies here as much as we possibly can. Yeah, and the only point I'd add is that just thinking about the opportunity as those companies get their financing, then they can think about taking space and growing in Fairfax County. So this is really what's going to help us recover from some of the job losses that we're seeing potentially on these pages. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vrysoloska. Mr. Vrysovarman. So I'm not sure. I looked at the agenda and this wasn't on the agenda, but we were also provided business data overview and pulse survey findings. And one thing that I was struck by on page five with respect to federal policies, I believe there were 330 respondents and all but 68 said there would be some sort of anticipated challenge due to what's going on with the federal government. Do you have any idea how Representative the 330 is of the broader market and are we really talking about You know, that's what I can't do the math off my top my head 80% of companies saying they're gonna be hurt by federal changes Let me provide little bit of information. So over about a month period and approximately the month of March, we had a survey out to our contacts asking them about businesses a little bit about kind of how they're doing any current or anticipated challenges that they may perceive. And also we asked about business optimism and a few other things related to tariffs. So we can learn more about our business community and also a piece into what may be coming up. So to that point or to that question of how representative is this, the large majority of respondents were very small businesses, which as we know is reflective of the overall business establishment makeup of our county and many jurisdictions. Also, most of the business respondents were in the professional and scientific services industry, which is also very representative of our economy and our overall makeup. So it's representative in that sense. It is not a huge sample. So I don't, we can't over emphasize what this is telling us. It's about 330 respondents. But it is a piece of information that we can all use as we're going forward. Okay, and I see that you did ask about tariffs, the Trump tax, and there were lots of people concerned about that as well. I think we all should be extremely concerned about that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice-Duraman. If no other board members have questions, I'll thank Stephen Alex for your presentations and we will move on to really an equally important part of the day which is to hear what the initial actually is our second meeting if you will of the state. Virginia General Assembly emergency committee on federal impacts by delegate David Bolivar, who's the chair of the committee and with that our chairman was Nintendo today and had a presentation and you could share with us well yeah I'd be I'd be glad to who was interesting addressing chairman Bulva it's like the old days but the different a different Bulva and so let me just say first, I want to thank the EDA and our staff for the data and information that they gave us. So much of what you just heard during this presentation was information that was shared today, including some of the analysis that was done, the independent analysis that was done. I will say this, obviously I had some asks in here and everybody should have a copy of those should have gotten them ahead of time. And again, one of the things staff for putting those together because they're right on point engendered a number of questions. These were all sent out to everyone's office in advance of today's meeting. So I see some weird looks like like they don't know what we're talking about. We received this yet. So we're going to have a text sent to them right now but it was coming but we were going to do as part of this meeting first. So Layton. Oh okay. Clayton told me they would they had already been all sent out. So these were distributed this morning to the group. I'm not sure why they're not here. Christine's going to do that right now. Somebody will get the next five minutes. All right. Look at them. And it's not for discussion today. It's just information. This is what was presented to our delegation. But before I briefly go through it, I'll just mention a couple of things because I think we have to be careful. I heard a little bit of it here. It's nice to want to know the precise numbers, but what was clear at this event is everybody has their own numbers, and it doesn't matter because it's a lot. It's either a lot or more than a lot. And I heard, you know, the secretary of labor downplay, some of the numbers as if layoffs and things weren't that big a deal. It's a big deal. This group is titled The Emergency Committee. Emergency. So I stress to them that we feel like that's what we're in here is an emergency. And let us not quibble and split hairs over numbers because a lot is a lot. It's whether you want to be a lot or a lot more in terms of what the impacts are. And so I shared a lot of numbers with them, including the tax revenue pieces that you all just heard and the implications on the county budget, on the state budget, the fact that this is not hypothetical. We referenced some of the layoffs that have already occurred. I stressed to them that, you know, what Terry Clouder had said in an event that was at last week, which is this is far worse a situation than anything we've ever faced in Virginia before in our lifetimes. And so that's by order of magnitude, what we're looking at in terms of economic impact. I shared with them that we got a lot of help during COVID, but it was from the federal government. And that's not going to happen this time. And so our ability to recover had to do with a lot of infusion of money and support. And so you'll see in the ask sheet that's here, a whole lot of asks that were built on the background of what we experienced during COVID and some of the federal support that we got for health and human services related things in particular. And so just to emphasize those for a moment, we ask for additional support for child care subsidies. We ask for additional support for housing assistance, emergency housing assistance and rental assistance. We ask for utility assistance and moratoriums on utility cutoffs for people who have lost their jobs. This should sound familiar to everyone here because it's like COVID round two. Support for our community-based organizations I met with a number of them last week are nonprofit groups who provide emergency assistance to folks are being inundated with requests already. And at the same time, a lot of their funding comes from people who are federal employees, are federal contractors. And so they're dealing with both problems, which is an infusion of new people, asking for support at a time when their own revenue numbers are going down through fundraising, because of the uncertainty of the economy that we're in. And so even some of their corporate donors are holding back right now because even if they're unrelated to the federal government, if you're in this region, you somehow are related to the federal government. And I think many of them are holding back in making those donations, which I think is something that is important. We did talk about some things we could use in the way of economic development, which is the backside of this sheet, and that is of course helping some of the dislocated workers, adapting and creating incentives to grow some of the areas we've heard from the EDA that there's a lot of work being done already, whether that's artificial intelligence, space related industries, some of the things that we've talked about here around this table for a while, that additional state support for those things would be helpful. And we also mentioned that our talent up program has been very successful, and it could be used as a model to expand those type of offerings to the entire region but to be able to do that we would need state financial support to do that. I emphasize to them that you know we recovered so quickly in COVID because of the federal money well unless we get state money there's no other place where this revenue could come from because you now have seen the numbers on what the potential revenue impacts are to the county. We don't have a source of revenue hanging around that's going to be able to help people in need and I emphasized after it to the press that it's very, very rare that Northern Virginia ever asks the state for help. But the state gets help from Northern Virginia every single day. And so here is an opportunity where we actually need the help. The state has a giant surplus. We could use some support to help these people stay in their jobs. And on the HHS piece, I'll just emphasize that it is a lot harder to find another job when you're worried about where you're going live. And that's where people will be if there's not this type of support coming in. We talked a little bit about the ripple effects. I know it was discussed here, but I just kinda put that personal for them because I know one of the first calls that I got and this is a ripple effect that is immeasurable was from our sheriff who called me and said, Jeff, I just left one, I just lost one of the most valuable, hard to recruit positions in the entire sheriff's office. And she jokingly said, it's probably the only job in the county worse than mine. And that is the, to be the public health nurse in the adult detention center. And she said, you know why I lost that job? Because the husband of that person lost their job at U.S. aid and they just decided to pack it in, retire and move to North Carolina earlier, where it's cheaper to live. And so I emphasize that many of these jobs, not only as they're not an easy job for them to move into. Many of these people are highly sophisticated, highly educated, highly specialized, and highly paid. And when the principal breadwinner of home loses their job, it's a whole lot harder to prevent them from leaving. And when they leave, they take somebody likely with them who also is a secondary wage earner, but an essential part of our community. Whether that's a teacher, a bus driver, a janitor, a public health nurse, any of the positions that a public safety worker, first responder. They're typically not the main income drivers of a household, and if the main person loses their income, you're going to lose people in Virginia. is their income, you're going to lose people in Virginia, not just in northern Virginia, but you're going to lose people in Virginia. So we... of a household and if the main person loses their income, you're going to lose people in Virginia, not just in Northern Virginia, but you're going to lose people in Virginia. And so we emphasized that point as well. And so it was very well attended. I had good data from EDA, good data from Rebecca, and her shop, good data from NVRC. There were several other presentations after mine had to leave early, but there were several other presentations after mine. But I think the main takeaway is we need to be very careful that we have numbers that are representative. They're important, they're contextual, but they're not real time. And what you will find is people, there's still people out who don't believe this this stuff is real. And they will try to engage you in a debate about the transparency of your numbers. And we need to make sure we're not getting in that debate and we're getting in a debate about the impact is big. And I think that was one of the big takeaways for me. This is a serious issue that needs a serious response from the state. And to be honest, outside of this emergency committee, as we know, there is no serious response from the Commonwealth of Virginia, even though we're the most impacted state in the country for what's happening right now. And it was interesting to hear the Weldon Cooper numbers too as it relates to Hampton Roads area too. And some the other parts of Virginia. And so really glad they had it here. We gave them as much information as we could, took a few questions and was very well attended today. So I think the folks who are on this committee are taking it very seriously. It was clear a lot of them, not from this area, don't understand necessarily federal government contracting and the intricacies of it. And so I think it was a real opportunity to educate on an order of magnitude what we're looking for and at least to get some real recommendations. And by the way, you look at these, these are not heavy lives. These are easy things to do that have already been modeled, that have demonstrated are effective in helping people through difficult times. And I know Chairman Boliva was very grateful to have real asks. I don't know. At the end, they were going to have a roundtable talking about kind of next actions. I wasn't there for that, but I'm going to follow up with David and find out what on this list got on this list got real traction and where they go from here. Thank you, Chairman. Did you get any sense any kind of feedback, some sense of their understanding or awareness that the impact is that significant? I mean, historically that's been part of our problem, as you just said, which is they don't see the fact that we're switching to come, you know, that cannot driver for them that even some minor changes here will have such huge impact on some. I don't know that it sunk in. The simple, you know, statement I've used before I didn't use it here today, but if our economy in Fairfax County has challenged the states has doomed. And so I don't know that they understand the magnitude of how what's happening here really affects Virginia. I did provide the tax revenue number that we had from the consultant, which was good, because I kind of put a real number out there. There were a number of questions about that. So I don't know that the full magnitude is understood. I will say that there was a lot of acknowledgement and head nodding over the HHS pieces that are asked for here. And I think it came from people across the state who have dealt with real economic challenges in their community before, whether it was COVID or something else. And I think understood the real value of some of the HHS that asks that are in here. I did get that sense from the committee, but in terms of understanding how this affects the state, I still think there's work to be done in that. It kind of reminded me of the times we've had trying to convince the state how there's $1 billion of revenue generated by transit in northern Virginia that goes to the state. So if you're invest a little bit of money in transit, you're gonna get a good return back Um, and how much work we have had trying to get that message across to the delegation I feel like we're at that point with this where we're starting to explain to them What the impacts are of of these things in northern Virginia to the state's bottom line But frankly, it's something we're gonna have to perpetuate and keep talking about in the months to come because keep in mind this is a small subset of the whole general assembly. And it's gonna take us a while to move that meter and convince them of what is obvious and apparent to all of us in the numbers. But again, the lag in some of the data has them thinking that this is not as big a deal as what we're talking about. And I think it more is because of the lagging data and the fact that they're not living this every day that we are. And so that's why I tried to give some personal anecdotes like the one with a sheriff because that got some people shaking their heads. I mean, how will we ever know how many highly qualified, hard to recruit people we lose to positions because their spouse lost their federal job. No one is really accounting for what that number is and that is a direct direct effect for local governments who in many cases are trying to attract that talent. And we know that the committee has at least two more meetings, I believe, and they're not issuing their report until September or so, which means there's a long way to go before we will see much really impact from the work that they're doing right now. we know the impact on how this is going to be quicker more faster and probably more harmful and the state's going to be able to respond so the more we can do as you pointed out to help people understand that the better chance we have of getting responses that are going to be supportive of our economy here and Dan just one final thought this list is not meant to be a complete list. I think this was a list of some immediate things that we could put on the table for the General Assembly to look at that are absolutely within their ability to do. And so as time moves on, we'll probably find many other things. But I think it was really important to put something on the tape, Put a formal ask on the table today while they were here, so that they had something to take away with them. But it is not meant to be a list of all the impacted areas and ways that can help, but really just a snapshot and time as we sit here today. And I appreciate staff's proper response on this. I know Rebecca, your team, and Chris and others who have been very involved with helping to create this to rise a palchette. Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you Mr. Chairman McKay as we're reading through this I think we were sitting here looking at I mean at 442 jobs at MITRE that's more than all of the others listed combined right and I appreciate that in addition to the front of this sheet having what I learned in the national emergency should be get in and get out as close you can, right? Respond, but then have a long-term plan. So I appreciate that the back of these recommendations mitigate, adapt, and transform, and that the adaptors were looking at these. And MITRE doesn't just provide services, right? That research and development, I remember first when I visited their seven labs and called it the adult TJ. It really, I mean, the loss of companies like MITRE, the reduction of companies like MITRE, the attack, that innovation in tapping into the skills and the knowledge in our community, highly educated community. I was just in the North Virginia Science Center groundbreaking. I mean, this region, we, we, we, and so many have put in so much time and energy and effort into growing that industry and that includes the research, includes the workforce, includes those investments to see that disappear overnight. It's just, I'm sitting here in shock. So I very, very much appreciate the work that Chairman McKay and our staff have done to put this together in any way that we can be supportive of those efforts. Please let us know. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, beer men, sorry. So how did, um, how did the other folks on the committee respond to and, and feel about our recommendations to mitigate potential federal impacts, especially the other folks on the committee who also are seeing big federal impacts? I mean, I think there's an interesting, um, I mean, obviously I want the rest of the state to help us, but we have an interesting alliance here with the Hampton Roads area, which also is heavily federal government worker, and frankly is also going to be absolutely crushed by tariffs. So what were their reactions to child care subsidy housing assistance, utility assistance, and what did they bring to the table as any potential asks as well? So I can't speak for what they brought to the table because I wasn't there for that part of it, but I can speak to how they reacted to our asks and the fact that most of their questions centered around those things, childcare subsidies and housing, I think was promising and those questions mostly came from people not in the Northern Virginia delegation. And so right after the presentation that was right before mine was the Weldon Cooper one, and that went ahead and emphasis on Virginia But also a sub emphasis on you know what's going on in Hampton roads that their exposure and numbers are nowhere near ours But compared to you know most of the country there's our high And so the folks who were there from those parts of the state seem you know very interested in compelled and we're asking questions. I don't know that this is a traveling committee. So the folks who were there today were representing largely the interest of Northern Virginia. And so I don't know what they have already put on the table. It's a great question though. It's something we should probably follow up with. I'm certainly happy to ask the members from our delegation who are on this, is this similar or in line with asks that you've gotten in other meetings around this issue and other parts of the state? It wouldn't surprise me if it was because we know that the two most expensive things pretty much regardless of where you live in Virginia is housing and child care if you need it. And so probably wouldn't surprise me to see some real similarities in there. I don't know if you know staff has any more intel on that than I do, but that was not a part of today, so I'm not certain about it. Yeah, so I stayed for the full meeting, but there was no roundtable at the end. It went very long. So there was no kind of wrap up or full discussion. And really the committee was largely listening and asking questions that didn't provide their own kind of feedback or input. Yeah. So that tells me we get to follow up and just make sure this stays on the radar that this wasn't just testimony or ideas But how do we turn these ideas into action? And I think you know one of the things and supervisor walk and Joy know how to leave for medical appointment, but one of the things we might talk about is from the legislative committee standpoint How do we translate these asks into formal requests to be considered and we we kind of did that today by putting them on the table, but we might need to be even more formal and frankly louder about them in the weeks ahead. One other piece. There is a second part of that meeting this afternoon. And so there could be additional feedback. Oh, one of my colleagues is there. And so what we can do is provide kind of a summary of the meeting as well for any additional information that may have come out. Thank you, Rebecca. And I think we would look forward to that and that would be helpful to keep us kind of 360 understanding what's happening. And what the reactions have been not only with the day to day that we, I mentioned earlier about Supreme Court deciding this or that, but also just for us to prepare for the next month is gonna be a tough challenge for us to try to decide for what this all means to our budget and how do we respond. So thank you Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your attendance and representing us. We're not going to move to the next part of our meeting which is a worker perspective and workforce outlook. I just want to remind people that we are expecting Congress to come by. We did ask our federal delegation and even the members of federal delegation if they wanted to be part of the meeting today to give some brief comments. I know that many of them would like to, but given the votes and the other activities going on in Congress, they were unable, but Congressman Byer has committed to doing that. So at some point in time, he's going to be calling in when he does. We're going to interrupt the discussion that we're having, give him the floor and have an opportunity to give his perspective. And I would just say, and he may mention as well, that he has not only had a worker kind of conference month and a half, six weeks ago, which was incredibly well attended, but also he's been holding almost, at least I've been to three of them, telephone kind of town meetings, which have been very, very helpful. If you tune in, you hear a lot of the questions are very much aligned to the things that were understanding and aware of the about people losing their job or the impact of how do they respond to child care and housing and other issues that they have. So with them. One piece before we do that just to add to that, through NVRC the mayors and chairs have a call every other week and And we have a lot of input from our congressional delegation. And so I know today was a challenge. We'll be grateful if Congressman Byer joins us. But Congressman Connolly, in particular, has been very outspoken. His staff involved in these things as well as staff from our two senators, Kane and Warner's office. And so I just want to make sure folks know that the Northern Virginia mayors and chairs are talking about these things with regularity with full engagement of our congressional delegation too. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Rebecca, you want to do so? Do you want me just to go to David? David, welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, thank you and board members, good afternoon. For those who don't know me, I'm David Hunt. I serve as the executive director of the Virginia Career Works Northern Region, where your regional workforce development board were one of 14 in the commonwealth of Virginia. Representing Fairfax County, Lavin County, Prince William County, and the cities of Fairfax Falls Church, Manassas and Manassas Park. Having said that, we work very closely with our colleagues in Arlington, Alexandria, much less the rest of the state. I was asked today to give you a quick update of what we're seeing on the workforce front, regarding the federal workers and the contractors. Stephen has given you a much of a head start on that, but I just wanted to point out, We have five what we call American Job Centers. These are bricks and mortar centers, three in Fairfax, one in Loudon and one in Prince William, that really serve as the hub of our services for individuals either dislocated, as well as those who are needing additional skills to come into the workforce, not to mention employers as well. One of the takeaways that I encourage you to think about, even before the federal challenges that we've seen over the last six weeks, we were on track in an unemployment region of 2.7% to likely see 45,000 workers coming in or job seekers coming into these five centers. We're also able to serve individuals remotely, virtually, and so that is able to enhance our services as well. We work very closely with the Fairfax County Department of Family Services. They are our contractor to offer staff at these five centers as well as at the Fairfax County jail and the Prince William jail. Regarding the federal workers, I wanted to just put a bit in context for you and Mr. if I might, I had a chance to read a little bit more about the Supreme Court decision this afternoon. And what I read, and according to the Washington Post, this was simply a decision that the plaintiffs did not have standing. And so there's actually a second Maryland district court that's pending right now. So those probationary workers are still, I think, on the books. And so I thought that was reasonably information that might be relevant to your conversations today. And really, in terms of my referencing the federal workers that we're seeing, it's been fairly modest right now, coming into our centers. This is a spreadsheet that we're preparing for the Governor's Office every week. And this is the total page of representing the Arlington, Alexandria area, our local area, Fredericksburg, and Hampton Roads. And I would just point out to that the third line and the bottom line. The third line is the numbers of federal workers or contractors walking into those five centers, or the rest of the state. And that's just over 500. We just got over the 500 mark this last Friday in the very bottom page, bottom line, just over 500 Virginians applying for unemployment in Virginia. Now as a reminder, for those who might work in the District of Columbia or in Maryland Virginians, they would apply within those two respective states. So we don't have the data right now. I know the governor's office is scrambling to try to find some comparability to share that information. So I'm not able to share today the level of detail that you might be wanting of how many Northern Virginians are applying as well. So this is the best number that we have so far. And as you can see, I would say it's pretty modest. In our business, we have what's called the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. That's where our team can come in and provide direct services to individuals who are seeking support. And as you can see on the fourth and fifth lines just over five have expressed interest in applying for work out a wheel of services. Of those we had hoped to have two of them to come here today to speak to you but one has already found a job and both of them were AID contractors that had been laid off very early in the process and so we were grateful for that for that to happen. Hopefully that we can multiply that many times over. But let me speak to why I think these numbers are modest. And I had a chance to speak to the State Workforce Board last Friday on the March 28th. And Chairman McKay, I would echo your comments that the thinking at that level at the state and Richmond was everything's under control. There's no problems. In fact, they were using January data that I was shocked at of why that was the case. But nevertheless, I had a chance two hours into the meeting to really express what I considered was a red flag event. And hopefully that got a little bit more attention. But I do believe the relative lack of walk in traffic, so to speak, is because of the lawsuits. The fact that the 29,000 that were on probationary, they're still pending, I don't believe that they've made any effort to come in. We have seen some action around the AID contractors because that happened so early on in the process. Stephen mentioned the HHS RIFs and Mr. Wachenschau had asked about when does a RIF happen in the federal level. I'm sorry, a warn notice. It happens when a RIF is announced. And so ironically, our colleagues in the state of Maryland received those RIFs and they were roughly 2,900 workers impacted all around NIH and all of the medical facilities in Bethesda. We would assume that there are some Northern Virginians in that mix. Other than that, the one notices that Stephen mentioned were really those that we've been limited to so far. But we're thinking once these layoff notices are processed through whether it's coming back to the administration, we anticipate a rift notice will happen next. And that will likely, and that's when the clock will start the 60 day clock of which these workers will then a worn notice will be issued will likely be notified, hopefully, and then we'll be able to at least start to see, um, some movement. But that could be May, June, July, or even later. And so that's why we're thinking and we're trying to prepare as best as we can how best to align our services and to be able to then reach out to these workers. And I'll get to that in just a moment. What we've tried to do and every local government, Fairfax County has taken a leadership role, this is our own website, this is the Virginia CareWorks Northern website. We've had a specific landing page for federal workers and contractors that we're trying to drive traffic to. We're wanting to make sure that these workers don't get lost among all of the other hundreds or tens of thousands that might be coming in our doors. And in fact, our team has really provided an expedited way for a federal worker or contractor to be brought into the system, registered, and to be enrolled if they so chose. So we wanted to make sure you saw that. We've typically not done this before, but the magnitude of what we're facing, we felt that this was absolutely necessary to be able to afford a very quick way to move into services. Now, if I could backtrack for just a moment. I've been in this business for 37 years, much of it with Fairfax but much of it in my current role. We've been through the 9-11 impact base realignment and closing in 2007. Of course, the economic meltdown in 2008 and 2009, and of course, and then of course, the pandemic. Every single occasion in the workforce world, we've seen millions of dollars being appropriated for dislocated worker services. And I just would want to make sure that you appreciated that. right now I'm not seeing any interest of moving forward with that even if there's anyone at the labor department to process that application. It really must come from the governor's team to do that. So the governor must declare what's called a rapid response. And then at some point a rapid, a national emergency grant would be developed and move forward. So I just wanted to make sure you appreciated the level. I know there's talk of no other federal resources. This could be federal funding that could support much of the work that I'm describing to you this afternoon. And that's really been an opportunity for us to then have more staff to be able to outreach to more workers, to really be able to handle the magnitude. During the height of the pandemic, we probably had 60,000 walk-in visitors to those five centers that I referenced versus the 45. Some of them will be applying for unemployment. Now, Virginia has transformed its unemployment system, so much of this can be done virtually. You don't have to come into our centers, but you can. I will say the security is quite rigid and so so many workers are finding that they have to commend much of this can be done virtually. You don't have to come into our centers, but you can. I will say the security is quite rigid, and so so many workers are finding that they have to commend it. They need help with their password. They need help technically because everything is either on the phone or on the computer. So this is a change. And Virginia's taking great credit in the way that they've transformed the Virginia Employment Commission. But now this is going to be a test. We'll let be able to respond if we see a surge in unemployment claims. Finally, and I say this as good news, I did. We did work very closely with this Virginia Secretary of Labor. We've never had to do this before. We're going to start a WAMADA campaign, outreach campaign to federal workers. And you're seeing a a couple slides right there where we're going to be able to advertise on Metro Rail, Metro Stations, as well as the platforms to let everyone know that this is a resource for potential federal workers and contractors. We'll be on the back of bus buses that will be commuting down into the District of Columbia. We hope that this campaign will start in the next week and a half to ten days. We're awaiting for some final edits. You'll notice that the Virginia staff want, the Virginia has jobs logo. That's the price repaying for having funding to be shared. But the great news is that they recognize this as an opportunity. And we'll be able to extend this campaign for at least 12 weeks once it gets started. So this will be the beginning. We're hoping that this will also potentially further investments in the workforce world will follow after that. I'm happy to stop and answer any questions that you might have. Thank you, David. It's Chairman. I'm good. Excellent. Thank you. Mr. President, project project and we'll just go down the table. Okay, we're very, thank you very much. This is so helpful. I'm thinking we were here looking at snow emergencies earlier today and rapid response between Vida and our county and I appreciate that. I mean, this is an emergency that we're looking at. So definitely the rapid response requiring the governor's approval, it sounds like if I'm hearing it correctly. Right. It would be generated from the Labor Secretary's office, that's correct. Okay. So I assume the Chairman and the steam are on that, but definitely good to know. I was not aware of that. And in addition, I love that you're working with Wilmata. As you're aware, Fairfax connector has quite a few buses and bus shelters that I know are currently open for advertising. So anything we can do to keep that collaboration and help spread the word here in northern Virginia, especially in Fairfax. I hope our teams will be happy to collaborate with that. Thank you. May I respond to one point about the rapid response? Much like those other natural emergencies that I mentioned a few minutes ago, typically Virginia, Maryland and the district have combined together. And so this is an opportunity if there is interest to have a tri-state response to the federal labor agency. They're facing similar challenges, probably not to the extreme that Fairfax County is. But I just point that out that there has been combined, but typically the federal funding will go to each individual state. So to the governor of Maryland, the governor of Virginia and the mayor of the district. Well, as you know, we're a huge, huge region and it's often difficult to communicate directly, right? With our residents in constituent. So I think any approach, whether it's targeted both locally as well as through Cog or the region, will be very helpful. And again, I think the rapid response idea of it, which our public safety team does so well, and this is an emergency that we're looking at. So I hope we can continue to get updates on that collaboration and figure out how to keep supporting the work that everyone at this table is doing. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Palsich. I'm too much of a mess. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, another great presentation back to back very timely. We're useful. There's a couple of things David, nice to see you again. And thank you for your participation as well as Alex on our workforce task force here in Fairfax County. Love the advertisement part part of it you know the bus stops I think are great. Two things you know everybody in the movies and they say advertise here that could be you know I'm just trying to think outside the box and also you know faith-based groups that are all local in all of our districts. That could be another part, but I just think that working with our offices, we all have social media, we all have newsletters putting the advertisements and pushing them out of something. I'd be very interested, so hopefully you'll be able to work with our offices on that issue. And thank you, Keith. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Resor, minutes. Mr. Resor, from the court. Thank you, Mr. Vrysor, Mennon. Mr. Vrysor, from... Thank you. David, thank you for the presentation. Again, I know some of us at the North Virginia Regional Commission saw a little bit earlier version of that. Right. And one of the things that we had discussed there, and it was a little bit broader discussion about, and your notation of the advertisements going on with Monica, I've got me to remember this. The need for a coordinated marketing and communication strategy across our economic development efforts. So Virginia has job, sounds great. But, you know, is that, how does that fit with what we're trying to do locally and regionally as well? So hopefully, hopefully those discussions are going on amongst all the players. I know this gets beyond workforce, but let's make sure, you know, that we actually do get a coherent message out there to targets. And I'm, by the way, from the previous discussion, I'm really glad to hear things are picking up in terms of what's coming across your desk. So thank you. Supervisor Alcorn, if I could mention, you'll notice the QR code on our ads. And if one were to put their phone on that, that'll take them to a specific landing page that highlights not only the EDA's website, but also the Virginia has jobs website. so we're trying to make it as simple as possible. I will say, and I told state officials this, the Virginia has job website, so we're trying to make it as simple as possible. I will say, and I told State Officials this, the Virginia has job sites simply takes them to a job board and people are on their own. So we really don't know how many can take advantage of that, maybe the more sophisticated job seeker, but others who haven't looked for work in 15 or 20 years might need some support from either our offices or some of our colleagues. Great. thank you. And then one other thing this had come up a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about the number of job openings in our Virginia. I think we were down to 40,000 or 42. It's crept back up just a hair. It's at 48 when I checked it earlier today. So I'm not sure if somebody's working to get more listings on there. Maybe that's what it is. But anyway, I'd like to see the higher number. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President Alcorn. Mr. President, Rearman. I just wanted to thank you for your point about the lawsuits and about red flags. Because I think it's really important that people understand that what's going on right now is deeply chaotic, it's deeply problematic, and it's also blatantly incompetent. I mean, the federal government is letting a bunch of people go and then hiring them back because they made a mistake. That's even before you get to the lawsuits. So when we're here talking about things that we're worried about, we wouldn't exactly expect today that everybody is rushing into your office because some of those people are still actually hoping to get their jobs back. They're dedicated civil servants who are getting jerked around and they're hoping to get their jobs back. But they haven't necessarily walked into your office yet. Or they're given some level of severance and they haven't yet, you know, the bank account has not yet hit zero. But I think it's really important that you, and this is why I say thank you, that you go to the state and that you let people know that what we're seeing is the calm before the storm to some degree with this. Because just because this isn't necessarily the pandemic, not everybody lost their job on one day, even though that's what they were trying to do. They were too incompetent to do that, and it was unconstitutional, but that's okay. But I think we need to continue beating the drum on this as something that's really important for us going forward and continue to be creative on how we are going to adapt. I love the ads pointing out that we do have a number of jobs here. We do have a number of opportunities and trying to keep that going. But it's just, it's so important what you're doing. so thank you very much. Yeah, I just want to make one other point, and this is why I get concerned with the exactness of the numbers for two reasons. One, what we're not really, we don't have a really good way of knowing is how many federal employees have resigned because they're tired of being treated the way that they're being treated. And there's a lot of them. There's people who have given up and said, you know, close to retirement or I don't need to be treated like this. They're not going to show up in some of these numbers. So there's that subset of people. And then to the supervisor, Alcorn's point about the job thing. I expect to see that number fluctuate. I don't know this to be a fact, but I will tell you that the chaotic nature of what's happening has required some federal agencies to go back and try to reinstate contracts that they had canceled. And now all of a sudden, the contractors, in some cases, had let people go and are trying to get them back to the point of chaos. And so, and by the way, to a point of costing every American taxpayer a whole lot more money. But this chaotic nature of what's happening will continue. And that's why it's hard to look at some of the numbers we're seeing and make very definitive conclusions about what's happening there. But I expect with chaos as fluctuation. And I expect to see this fluctuation for months to come. And it can be as something as simple as contractors getting their contracts reinstated and needing people to come back that once were terminated. Or in some cases, we're going to see where, you know, federal employees are resigning giving up because they don't want to be treated this way and some of those things just aren't going to show up in the exact numbers. And so that's why I started by saying, you know, it's good to have the numbers, it gives us an idea of what's going on, but they're bad or worse. And so let's track them and figure out what's going on. But more importantly, let's take actions on things we can do to try to help people. If we have a couple more minutes, I don't think Congress and buyers aren't quite yet. David, of course, provides a great perspective on what's happening, but also is working directly with people. And you had an opportunity to talk with someone who was thinking about being here today, but really felt concerned about kind of her job prospects in speaking in a public forum. But David, I wonder if you might, I talked with her a little bit as well, but if you have her story, I think it's representative of what a lot of people are going through. Well, thank you, Rebecca. Well, actually there were two. There was one person from Fairfax County who had been an AID contractor. Unfortunately, her father had passed away as well, so there was a lot of stress going on in her life. So she is now one of our five customers that were helping in her job search. But I think it's really indicative of what we're hearing that. This came out of the blue. They never saw this coming. And so if she's now having to reorient her life back to, back to square one, actually, among all of the other challenges. The other individual a male in Prince William County is also a client of ours but that's the gentleman who found a job. He too was an AID contractor, a budget analyst. I beg your pardon, he was a full-time civil servant, but he's now been able to find another financial management job. I don't know quite how the salaries compare, but he's grateful for at least having that security of moving forward. That's really all the details I have Rebecca at this point. When I talked with a woman who is a contractor, people have so much going on in their personal lives. As David mentioned, her father just passed away. This huge family stress, you know, altered her child care situation as well. And she has been told that she likely is going to have to move out of her apartment in June because her income is not able to sustain the rent. And so, you know, at the meeting that Chairman McKay spoke at this morning, there's a lot of discussion of child care, of unemployment insurance levels, as well as mental health services. So there's, of course, all of these immediate needs in this one particular kind of story in camp, in camp, encapsulated a lot of what many, many people are going through in our region. She also said, share that she's very motivated. She, she should, she loves working with her workforce specialist. She was so emphatic that it's been a fantastic experience for her. And it seemed like she was getting a lot of hope and promise from that experience. So that's positive. But she was applying to many, many, many jobs a day. And this goes back to something else. It's been brought up quite a bit as skills alignment. You know, we have a very educated federal workforce in our region with some very specialized skills. Some of those will transfer and translate. And some will take time. And some it may not be in the cards. So just wanted to kind of share that story. I thought you would appreciate that the case worker that Rebecca mentioned is a Fairfax County Department of Family Services employee. So great accolades to her. Thank you. And as you may know, we're waiting to see if Congressman Ryer is going to be able to join us or some things happening on the House floor. So we're going to, I think there's a couple more questions that maybe we all have and we can keep talking and just see if he can join us before three o'clock. I would love to get his imp tight and comments because he's had a number of meetings with employees, federal employees as well as I think his leadership on this issue has been pretty, pretty out there. And for those of you who have had a chance to be part of his telephone town meetings as well as his other workforce meeting, I think you'll definitely see that he's, and he recognizes obviously that a key part of his constituency are federal employees. And he wants to make sure that he's out, but they know he's all in on making a difference for them. I know one of the issues that I have and I'm concerned about it and I know that we'll have a month or two to kind of work this through his what if any changes that we should think about or consider with respect to our budget. And I know that our kind of executive put a budget together and should with us now a couple of months ago. And I would just, is there a process that maybe that he can identify that he and his staff, the DMB and others are doing to look at what this means and how they may or may not consider bringing things back to us for the responses? Supervisor Stork, thank you for the opportunity. You know, like everybody said here today, the goal right now is to retool up skill and provide. the opportunity. You know, like everybody said here today, the goal right now is to retool upskill and provide opportunities for people, whether it be in local government or federal government or wherever, private industry. I think it was two weeks ago, supervisor and Smith and I were at Mount, sorry, Grace Baptist, sorry, my not all of Baptist, sorry, my not all of Baptist Church. And we had a community day where we had workforce development. And I believe there was about 500 chairs and there was probably 600 people there looking for the opportunities to change their career past because many of them were with the federal government no longer with the federal government. What I saw that day, whether there is a lot of talent out there, however, there's not a lot of openings in local governments as we're trying to pull back and see what's happening as well as the countries trying to see what's happening. The one thing I noticed is that training and development is key. What they, and then Rebecca mentioned this, the very narrow skill set needs to be a little bit more wider, and they have the ability to do it because they're very smart people and individuals. When I look at our budget, our budget is pretty fluid until it's not fluid. So obviously, B-Poles coming in next month. Once we have B-Pole in, I can kind of get a gauge on where our small businesses are. As Alex stated, 94% or is it Steven? Somebody over there stated 94% of our business is small business under 50 in Fairfax County, but yet I think it's 75% of the employees are under in large business. So it's kind of like a little ecosystem development thing that we're looking at. As the budget continues to move forward, and every month we get data from the labor folks, we will basically have to retool and restructure what we're doing. But as of right now, the numbers are so low, we really are just watching to see what happens. And with these gentlemen, the EDA and Rebecca and now Jen, when we get those numbers, we do have a little think tank with the DMB trying to figure out, all right, what's next? This is not like COVID. I didn't know what was going on in COVID. Every day it changed from minute to minute hour to hour, but I knew it was going to end at some point. What's going on with the federal government and the way they're dealing with things, I do not know when it's going to end or how it's going to end. But the one thing I want to say is that we have to be very empathetic, sympathetic as government employees, local government is where it happens. And we will continue to focus on making sure that all residents are taking care of in Fairfax County under the direction of the board of supervisors. So that's where we are right now. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate the comments I think it gives us an overview or side of what you're looking at and thinking about in. And I know that particularly the constant meetings on this and then I'm going to go back to the chair because the comment you made earlier is probably the one that we most need to keep in front of us, which is this is going to have a big impact. And we can talk about this number here or that number there, but the consequences are big and significant. And we're not going to really know those until they literally roll out. And to some degree, that's too late. We need to have that assessment at this point and be working and looking and thinking about that now. Yeah, I would just add, since you brought that up, Supervisor Stork, one, I appreciate what Brian said. I know there's a team of folks looking at federal executive orders, all the other things that have an impact on Fairfax County operationally. But I would just remind people that while we're heavily impacted here, and we're going to make sure everybody knows that as we move forward, that this is why it's really important in the budget to always populate our reserves. We talked about this during COVID. Being able to be in a position where our reserves are fully funded for events that occur, that in many ways are unpredictable. In a AAA bond-rated agency is really important. And so I know it's hard at times for us competing with all the different needs that are out there in our community, but making sure that our reserve accounts are full and the event something happens that we need to be responsive to, we're in a position to be able to do that. It won't be easy. Thankfully, we don't do that. But I am serious other than the recommendation was made about the rapid response and the state being able to pull federal funds to support, the idea that there's going to be some federal infusion of cash that comes in that help us get through a difficult budget year is not going to happen. And so at the beginning of COVID, we felt like we were on our own. I feel a little bit like that right now in some ways that we're on our own again. But we always budget conservatively, project conservatively, have our rainy day and other sustainability funds and reserves fully funded so that we're ready to face the challenges ahead. But that doesn't mean we're going to stop talking about the order of magnitude that we're dealing with because it is significant. Well, thank you Mr. Chairman. I'm just going to wrap up here and just thank Rebecca Steven Toad-Edie and Alex Adams from EDA. David Hunt from Skill Source for being here today giving us your insights. And I'm sure this won't be the last time we see you. And that's maybe important for us to keep looking around the corner if you all over the hill and get a sense of what's happening and being prepared for whatever that might be. Additionally, I wanted to appreciate how much, in my mind, the economic, the data that was provided helped me to get a sense of all those things and do that. The next step is, frankly, we need to be focused on as a region, how do we identify the key investment priorities, determine where our strategic pivots need to be? I know we've identified a number of them. Anybody who's not sure about that, you've probably not been to several recent meetings where we where we've talked about space and AI and quantum, etc. where we know we have an important role to play. And those strategic pivots, I think, are crucial to our continued development and frankly growth as an economy in a region. On May 3rd, Congressman Byers' Office will host another job fair for regional workers at the George Washington Middle School. There'll be 50 companies there expected to participate again that's May 3rd, Congressman Buyer, George Washington Middle School for job fair for regional workers, as well as on May 9th, Fairways County and Career Works will host a job fair here at the Government Center with 70 companies. Again, that's May 9th, Fairfights County, Career Works right here at the government center with 70 companies. And there are, as we heard earlier, there are 47,000 open positions in Northern Virginia that can be accessed, working in the Northern Virginia.com. Website, we know that they don't all align to necessarily what people may have in terms of resources or skills, but it's a place to start and we also have others and with skills or some others who are actually there to continue work with folks. And our next EIC meeting will be held on July 8th if not before depending upon what we see happening we'll continue to monitor this and bring you all back when we believe it's important to consider further actions or understanding on our part. So with that, thank you all very much for being here today and this meeting is adjourned. I