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VPM Daily Newscast: Virginia Medicaid, Henrico County’s water, federal RTO

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VPM Daily Newscast

The VPM Daily Newscast contains all your Central Virginia news in just 5 to 10 minutes. Episodes are recorded the night before.

Listeners can subscribe through NPR One, Apple Podcasts, Megaphone, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a recap of the top stories on the morning of Jan. 22, 2024:

Lawmakers aim to protect Medicaid expansion for thousands of Virginians
Reported by VPM News’ Adrienne Hoar McGibbon

About 636,000 Virginians are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage if the federal government cuts funding for the entitlement program. But state lawmakers are trying to install some protections in the commonwealth.

Sen. Creigh Deeds (D–Charlottesville) and Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D–Chesterfield) submitted a budget amendment that would remove a trigger law that automatically ends Medicaid expansion if federal funding falls below 90% of the cost to cover the expanded group. That group includes adults younger than 65 who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level.

Speaking with reporters following his State of the Commonwealth address earlier this month, Gov. Glenn Youngkin committed to fully funding Virginia’s Medicaid responsibilities, but expressed concern about the expansion’s increasing costs.

“We do have a rapid increase in Medicaid costs in Virginia,” he said. “Finding ways that we can, in fact, address the rapidly rising costs in Medicaid ... this is important.”

Henrico County working on contingencies after Richmond water outage
Reported by VPM News’ Lyndon German

Henrico County officials are monitoring the ongoing restoration efforts at Richmond’s water treatment facility following reports last week that county residents were finding cloudy water coming from their faucets.

Bentley Chan, Henrico’s director of public utilities, told VPM News the county is working on contingency plans after a pump failure at Richmond’s Douglasdale treatment plant caused a water outage that affected not just the city itself, but surrounding localities, for several days.

Thousands of homes in Henrico are reliant on Richmond’s water supply, thanks in part to an agreement the two localities signed in September 1994. At the time of the agreement, Henrico was Richmond’s largest water customer, getting 90% of its supply from the city.

The joint resolution allowed Henrico to build its own water treatment facility on Three Chopt Road, but required the county to purchase a minimum of about 12 million gallons of water per day from the city until July 2040.

“We pay for it, we have to take it,” Chan said. “If we don't take it, we still have to pay.”

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VPM News is the staff byline for articles and podcasts written and produced by multiple reporters and editors.