For a list of key bills introduced by legislators from Southwest and Southside or relevant to our region, see our accompanying legislative roundup.
The General Assembly on Saturday adjourned its regular 2024 session after sending more than 2,200 bills to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s desk in the past 60 days. Lawmakers also adopted the conference reports for the state’s $188 billion biennial budget for fiscal years 2024-26 that is set to take effect July 1.
The budget includes more than $2.5 billion in new funding for K-12 public education, a 3% salary increase for teachers and state employees, $2.5 million for the proposed inland port in Washington County and $70 million in one-time general fund support to accelerate the Interstate 81 northbound lane widening project.
But while Democrats, who hold a 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates and a 21-19 edge in the Virginia Senate, were pleased with their legislative accomplishments, many Republicans decried what they called an increasingly partisan push to the left among their colleagues from across the aisle.
“That’s a new breed of Democrats that’s very different from the old line of more business-friendly, moderate Democrats, especially in the Senate,” said Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, singling out Sens. Dick Saslaw, Chap Petersen, George Barker and Janet Howell, who didn’t return this year.
“With all the gun control bills and all the social issues that they have passed, I think you are going to see a whole lot of vetoes from the governor,” Peake said in a brief interview.
The November election, in which Democrats regained full control of the legislature, brought in a wave of freshman lawmakers in both chambers — 54 of the 140 legislators are new to their seats.
“Meeting new people that are coming into these chambers was great, and I think they took their jobs very seriously, on both sides of the aisle,” said Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, who has served in the Senate since 2012.
“But then we kind of broke down to 51-49 in the House, and 21-19 in the Senate, and they acted like it was a 60-40 percentage split in favor of Democrats and started passing bills and almost never killed a bill, knowing that the governor is going to veto,” Stanley said, referring to the majorities in both chambers. “We started out on substance and we turned it into stop-nance, and the problem is that this is not good for Virginia.”
Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County and the House minority leader, said during a press conference at the General Assembly Building on Saturday that the policies pushed by Democrats during this year’s legislative session would make life harder for Virginians, if signed into law.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and our friends on the other side have laid down quite a few extra miles of pavement,” Gilbert said. “If you look back at this session you can see over and over again that Democrats are checking boxes for their friends, the radical environmentalists, the trial lawyers, the labor unions, and this is all embodied in the legislation they are carrying forward under the pretense that it’s making life better and less expensive for people they purport to care about.”
During the 60-day session, Democrats passed a wide array of bills on a party-line vote, including a measure sponsored by Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, that would ban assault-style weapons in the commonwealth and legislation that would increase the minimum wage from the current rate of $12 per hour to $15 by 2026.
Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, the only remaining Democrat in the legislature from west of Charlottesville, said that despite the high turnover among lawmakers, “a lot of bright people from both sides of the aisle” came with good intentions to try and bring good legislation.
“We have passed a budget with bipartisan support as well as a variety of legislation. I think it’s been a pretty good session,” Rasoul said, adding that he took pride in being able to pass “many items through the budget, trying to take care of Roanoke and Southwest Virginia.”
And Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County and the new Senate majority leader, said considering the large number of new legislators, this year’s session was fairly quiet.
“Almost half of the Senate is brand new. A lot of people have been wondering whether that might be destabilizing the body, but I think things ran very smoothly,” Surovell said in an interview.
“This seems to be the first time we got a budget out on time in a few years, so I think things went pretty well this session. But things are going to change, I think you are going to see a lot of vetoes for the reconvened session in April, and that’s really going to change the town, and I hope the governor doesn’t veto a lot of things, like minimum wage and retail cannabis.”
Unlike the two previous sessions, when the Republican majority in the House served as a roadblock to some of the Democrats’ signature proposals, this year it will be up to Youngkin to veto any legislation not aligned with the GOP’s legislative agenda — forcing him “take a public position on a wide array of different issues” for the first time, Surovell said.
“The governor rarely sits for interviews, and during the campaign he barely had any real debates, and he didn’t come out with his platform until the middle of September [2021],” Surovell said. “But we’re about to find out where this governor stands on a wide array of important things, and I am hoping that this doesn’t end up increasing the tensions in a bad way. If he drops 100 vetoes it’s going to be a long two years.”
For example, Youngkin made clear at the onset of the session that he was not interested in legislation that would create a marketplace for adult-use cannabis or legalize skill games, the slots-like betting machines installed in businesses around the state before an on-again, off-again ban took effect.
Democrats still held out hope that Youngkin would consider signing cannabis legislation in exchange for their support of what he considers to be the legacy project of his tenure: the proposed $2 billion sports arena in Alexandria that would bring the NBA’s Washington Wizards and NHL’s Washington Capitals to Virginia at Virginia taxpayers’ expense.
But after Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth and the chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, blocked the arena proposal, Youngkin reiterated that the cannabis issue was off the table.
“I have strongly held beliefs on lots of topics that are being sent to me,” Youngkin said at a news conference at the state Capitol on Wednesday. “I’ve been clear, I don’t have any interest in cannabis legislation, and I have expressed that to people over and over again.”
Referring to the arena project, Youngkin said, “here we are talking about an opportunity to bring 30,000 jobs, $12 billion of economic impact in the commonwealth of Virginia, in the fastest growing and most dynamic area, which is sports and entertainment, and you want to talk about putting a cannabis shop on every corner? I don’t quite get it.”
Surovell called Youngkin’s position on cannabis “baffling,” especially considering that a regulated retail market would generate an estimated $300 million for the state in tax revenue every year. “We have a $7 billion K-12 hole, and cannabis retail is supported by 65% of the public. His opposition to it makes zero sense to me,” Surovell said.
Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, who carried the legislation that would create a legal adult-use marketplace for cannabis products by May 2025, said he was concerned that a gubernatorial veto would allow a public safety hazard for marijuana users in Virginia to continue.
“What I’m most concerned about is the illicit cannabis market that is still thriving and putting users at risk. We had these untested and unregulated products on the market and had all kinds of incidents with potential overdoses,” Rouse said in an interview Friday. “I hope that the governor will sign it, not just for economic reasons but to make sure that nobody gets a hold of products that may be laced with fentanyl.”
Rouse rebuked Youngkin’s claim that his proposal would “put a cannabis shop on every corner,” citing a provision that would cap the number of retail stores at 350 statewide. While his legislation, if vetoed, could be brought back in the coming years, Rouse said that he would rather see it succeed this year.
“I was always taught that you don’t put off until tomorrow what you could do today,” Rouse said. “We have an opportunity to sign a strong and solid piece of legislation with a broad coalition of support and that’s for all Virginians. We just have to drive out the illicit market and make sure that there are safe products in the market, and make sure that our law enforcement have clear lines to enforce. It’s not about an economic development deal, that can be revived at any moment, but you can’t revive lives once they are lost.”
After the 2022 General Assembly session, Youngkin proposed amendments to 115 bills and vetoed 25 measures. Last year, he vetoed just eight.
Youngkin has 30 days to act on most bills sent to him this year. But earlier this week, he already took action on more than 84 bills that Democrats had fast-tracked to his desk, signing 64 of them into law, including a proposal that will codify marriage equality in Virginia.
Youngkin also amended 12 bills, among them a measure that requires health insurance carriers to provide coverage for contraceptives, and he vetoed eight bills, including legislation that would have limited access to guns for individuals who are subject to a protective order or who have been convicted of domestic abuse.
The House Democratic Caucus said in a statement Saturday that Youngkin’s choice “to veto and offer overzealous amendments to these critical pieces of legislation will do nothing more than ensure that guns are left in the hands of domestic abusers, restrict access to reproductive healthcare and threaten our democracy and our voting rights.”
For the second time this week, the Republican governor of this commonwealth “showed his allegiance to power hungry MAGA extremists and, yet again, every Republican in the General Assembly has bent the knee to a man who boasts his role in overturning women’s healthcare and inciting attacks on democracy,” the caucus said.