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Delegates Tom Rust & Tag Greason Visit ECHO

 Not any more for Virginia Delegates Tag Greason (R-32) and Tom Rust (R-86). They took several hours out of a busy schedule July 15 for lunch with CEO Bill Haney and the staff, and a tour of the facility on Lawson Road. 

“Many of us don’t know the extent of services provided here,” said Rust, a 10-year veteran of the House of Delegates in Richmond. “This visit was very informative. I love that this is here, and it is probably underutilized.” 

Rust expressed some surprise when he learned that ECHO serves western Fairfax as well as Loudoun. He said he would use his newfound appreciation of ECHO simply to raise awareness among his colleagues in Richmond. 

Greason, in the second year of his first two-year term in the General Assembly,  said he arrived “knowing very little and now I know a great deal. I think there is an opportunity to help get some doors open here, to get some local companies to expand their workforce [with a team from ECHO]. More people and more positions, that’s what I’m going to work on.”

Greason jotted notes during the visit and will work with Karen Russell and Karen McCarthy to get the message out to more local companies that can benefit from ECHO services. 

Greason elaborated that his guiding principle as an elected representative is that “government should be involved in a limited number of core functions and do those core functions very well – education, defense, infrastructure are certainly on the list. We don’t expect each of us to go out and build roads.” 

Do that well, Greason said, and there will be resources available for his second guiding principle: “We should be there to help those who can’t help themselves.”ECHO,  he said, clearly falls into that category.

 By Shannon Sollinger