Less than a week after his most recent flurry of gubernatorial vetoes, Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday vetoed an additional 22 bills that he said would weaken criminal penalties and erode public safety. He also signed 36 more measures and amended two.
“I really felt that those bills were undermining our public safety, and I can’t let that happen,” Youngkin told reporters during a visit in Roanoke on Thursday, referring to the legislation he vetoed.
“Over the last two years on a bipartisan basis, we have really moved to support law enforcement to make sure that we are able to have our law enforcement community, our commonwealth’s attorneys and our judges work in order to promote safe communities, and I felt that these bills undermined that,” Youngkin said.
While a spokesperson for the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys declined to comment Thursday, John Jones, the executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association, said that his group was “delighted” with the latest slate of vetoes.
“We supported the vetoes, and we represent the law enforcement and the sheriffs across the state, I think that speaks for itself. Some of those bills would have made it more difficult for sheriffs to do their jobs,” Jones said in a phone interview Thursday.
But advocates for criminal justice reform pushed back against Youngkin’s latest strike with his veto pen, which brings to 50 the number of bills passed this year by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly but then vetoed by the governor.
“It’s disingenuous for the governor to use so-called public safety as an excuse to veto common sense legislation to incentivize good behavior, make it safer to report overdoses, and protect people with special needs in distress,” said Chris Kaiser, policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia.
“If Governor Youngkin — or the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association — were serious about public safety, he wouldn’t make it harder for people to come forward when they need help. Families devastated by the opioid crisis, people with incarcerated loved ones, immigrants to the commonwealth, and all Virginians deserve better than what they got from the governor,” Kaiser said in an email.
Rob Poggenklass, the executive director of Justice Forward Virginia, said that Wednesday’s vetoes make it clear that Youngkin isn’t interested in solutions addressing flaws in the state’s criminal legal system, but that instead he is interested in “the politics of fear.”
“He’s really playing to the base, and it shows. We’re interested in solutions that will help communities and families feel safe, and some of the bills that he vetoed last night would have accomplished that,” Poggenklass said.
As examples, Poggenklass named SB 357, sponsored by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County, and its companion measure, HB 267, carried by Del. Vivian Watts, D-Fairfax County, which Justice Forward Virginia supported.
Both proposals would have allowed individuals accused of assault and battery on a law enforcement officer — felonies that carry a minimum of six months in jail — to cite mental illness or a developmental disability such as autism as a defense.
Youngkin said in his veto statement that a “new, loosely defined, and excessively broad affirmative defense” is unnecessary because Virginia laws already provide protections for individuals who are not criminally responsible due to mental illness.
“The proposal significantly reduces the protections afforded to law enforcement and erodes the commonwealth attorney’s discretion in evaluating cases, needlessly introducing logistical and procedural challenges that further burden our strained court system. This bill sends the wrong message at precisely the wrong time,” Youngkin wrote.
But Poggenklass said that the families in the autistic and mental health communities that Justice Forward Virginia has worked with don’t feel safe calling law enforcement when their loved ones are experiencing a behavioral health crisis.
“This bill has been five years in the works, and this is the first time it has passed both chambers, and despite pleading from the mental health community and people in the autistic advocacy community, he vetoed it and said that it would weaken criminal penalties,” Poggenklass said.
Youngkin also vetoed a measure that Poggenklass said would have helped move Virginia’s drug use policies in a more sensible direction. Under HB 455, sponsored by Del. Katrina Callsen, D-Albemarle County, the possession of less than 1 gram of a controlled substance would have been treated as a misdemeanor instead of a felony.
“This bill allows prosecutors, when they decide to, to reduce felony drug possession, which carries up to 10 years in prison, down to a misdemeanor if all the person was in possession of was the residue from the used drug,” Poggenklass said. “This was a joint recommendation of the Virginia Criminal Justice Conference. This was their consensus solution to this problem of people facing 10 years in prison for the possession of residue, and he vetoed that.”
Appearing live on Fox News on Thursday morning, Youngkin defended his frequent use of the veto pen this year, which puts him on a fast track to exceed the 120 pieces of legislation that former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and the most recent governor facing a legislature controlled by the opposing party, rejected during his four years in office. Youngkin has vetoed a total of 91 bills to date.
“We have a legislature that has a one-seat majority in our House and a one-seat majority in our Senate, and they are sending me bills that are really representative of the progressive left,” Youngkin said on the cable network. “They literally want to undermine public safety, they want to make it harder for our prosecutors and our judges to hold people accountable. So yeah, I vetoed 22 bills yesterday to make sure that Virginians are going to be safe.”
During the interview, Youngkin singled out two measures that he said were “trying to protect illegal immigrants.”
SB 69, sponsored by Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William County, would have qualified noncitizens legally present in the United States under the immigration policy Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, for the position of police chief. HB 972, introduced by Del. Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington, sought to prohibit courts from inquiring into a defendant’s immigration status.
“They were going to allow noncitizens to be police chiefs in the commonwealth of Virginia, and they were going to prohibit our criminal justice system from asking a basic question around the immigration status of someone who has been arrested,” Youngkin said.
Jones, the executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association, said that while his organization would likely have supported each of the 22 criminal law vetoes, it had requested that Youngkin specifically veto two proposals.
The first, HB 161, sponsored by Del. Holly Seibold, D-Fairfax County, would have protected prison or jail inmates from being convicted of possessing, buying or selling alcohol or drugs if the inmates seek emergency treatment for an overdose for themselves or others.
“If you have an inmate that is using drugs, the bill would have provided that we would not have been able to discipline the inmate, and that would have hampered us in an investigation about how the drug got into the jail,” Jones said. “That was a dangerous bill, we already have a statutory provision for safe-harbor for people that use drugs, and those provisions apply to everyone, whether they are incarcerated or not.”
The other proposal, SB 334, by Del. Saddam Azlan Salim, D-Fairfax County, sought to prohibit plea agreements and court orders from including any provision that purports to waive, release or extinguish a defendant’s rights under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“The law enforcement community regularly used voluntary waivers to search, and people can waive their rights under the Fourth Amendment, that’s a standard procedure,” Jones said. “We felt like it was a hamper to criminal justice, and we were in line with the governor’s thinking on that. The Sheriff’s Association requested the governor to veto both of those bills, and we have already expressed our appreciation for doing so.”
Justice Forward Virginia’s Poggenklass, however, said that Youngkin’s vetoes have demonstrated that there are two different definitions of public safety in the commonwealth.
“On the one hand, you have a governor and attorney general who seem pretty convinced that the only route to public safety is jail, prison and arresting and punishing people. On the other hand you have a vision of public safety that includes things like not putting people with mental illness and autism in jail, not putting people who have substance use disorder in jail but getting them treatment instead,” Poggenklass said.
“Justice Forward Virginia does not believe that the lock-them-up, throw-away-the-key method is really what’s keeping people feel safe in their communities.”
For a complete list of the 22 vetoed bills from Wednesday, including Youngkin’s comments, click here.