Here’s what to expect at this week’s General Assembly session

Are you ready to rumble?

The General Assembly returns to Richmond on Wednesday to deal with all the bills that Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed or amended, and both sides seem primed for a fight.

In most cases, the outcome of those fights is already known — at least within the confines of the legislature. Much of what will be going on is something of a stage fight where the real audience is the electorate in this fall’s gubernatorial and House of Delegates elections. How voters perceive all this could help shape the outcome of those elections; that’s something both Democrats and Republicans are counting on, just in different ways.

Procedurally, none of the governor’s vetoes will likely be overridden — that would require a two-thirds majority, and Democrats hold only narrow majorities in both the House (51-49) and Senate (21-19). None of Youngkin’s vetoes on high-profile bills came as a surprise. All of those — from legalizing cannabis retail sales to raising the minimum wage to allowing public employees to unionize — now become talking points for both parties. For Democrats: These are all the good things we could have if we didn’t have a Republican governor standing in the way. For Republicans: These are all the bad things we’ve protected you from by having a Republican governor with a veto pen.

The real action will be with the amendments the governor has proposed to both 159 bills, plus another 205 amendments to the budget.

These amendments generally fall into three categories:

1. Some are technical amendments that don’t seem to change the general point of the bill.  This is the governor as copy editor-in-chief.

2. Some deal with nonpartisan policy choices that the legislature will need to decide on. For instance, the legislature passed a bill to regulate surveillance cameras and specified that the data could only be retained for 21 days. Youngkin wants to change that to 30. Those extra nine days mean a lot to some reluctant supporters of the bill, who felt even 21 days was too much. This comes under the heading of “nonpartisan” because surveillance is one of those curious issues that splits both left and right. For instance, one of the legislators urging the General Assembly to back the governor’s amendment to the surveillance bill is Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County. That’s not your standard political alignment.

3. Some deal with policy choices that are highly partisan in nature. The outcomes of these amendments generally aren’t in doubt. Democrats will reject them, then the governor will surely veto the original bill, and at that point, there’s no recourse. 

Virginia’s legislative process at this point is something of a game of “chicken”: Each side is daring the other to accept its point of view. From the governor: Accept this amendment or I’ll probably veto the bill. From the legislature: Nah, we dare you to sign the unamended version. 

The governor, any governor, has more leverage early in his (or soon to be her) term because three to four years is a long time for legislators to wait. Sometimes it’s better to accept what the General Assembly might see as a lesser version of a bill than to have no bill at all; things can always be improved upon later. However, Virginia’s one-term governor rule means governors are lame ducks from Day One, and so by the final year of a governor’s term, their leverage is diminished. That’s especially so now when you have a governor and a General Assembly from different parties. Youngkin has little bargaining power left; this is the last time he’ll have to deal with bills (unless there’s some special session ahead). Furthermore, Democrats are supremely confident that they’ll win both the governor’s race and expand their majorities in the House in November. Their view on both the governor’s vetoes and the prospect of more vetoes is essentially “fine, we’ll just wait until next year when Governor Spanberger will sign this.” Republicans may think Democrats are a little too confident about Abigail Spanberger being such a shoo-in for governor, but this is how Virginia Democrats see things.

All that means is they might accept the governor’s unstated dare to veto any unamended bills. They might think anything less than a perfect bill is a good campaign issue. Case in point: The legislature passed a bill to create a right to obtain and use contraceptives. The governor returned that with a request for an amendment with a conscience clause for doctors or pharmacists who might have a religious objection. As soon as it was known that Youngkin had a proposed amendment, but before the details of that amendment were published on the legislative website, Democrats were sending out press releases that he had “gutted” the bill. For political purposes, they may feel they benefit more from a possible veto than they do a law that has an exemption they don’t like. 

Likewise, Republicans are looking forward to a fall campaign where one of their targets is the Clean Economy Act, which mandates a carbon-free electric grid by 2050. Republicans contend this requirement is driving up power bills; Democrats say it’s not. We will not resolve that argument here, but we can look at the outlines of how this will play out. Youngkin vetoed one Democratic-sponsored energy bill with this message: “The Virginia Clean Economy Act is failing Virginia and those that champion it should stop trying to buttress this failing policy.” He sent back another with an amendment that would repeal the act’s key provisions, something he surely knows Democrats won’t accept. With yet another bill, he attached an amendment that would lift the act’s provision for three years. Why propose a three-year exemption to that bill but a full-on repeal with another? It would appear to me that he’s trying to create multiple talking points — Democrats wouldn’t accept this, they wouldn’t accept that. 

In my conversations with legislators from both parties, the real questions aren’t about bills but about the budget — and gubernatorial appointments. 

With economic uncertainty looming, Youngkin wants more money added to the state’s “rainy day” fund. That’s not necessarily a partisan move — it might even be a fiscally prudent move — but it takes place in a political environment where the governor and the Democratic majority in the General Assembly are barely on speaking terms.

To say that Democrats hate President Donald Trump is an understatement. (During the session, state Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, poked fun at Democrats by saying their policy was simply to say “Orange Man — bad!”) They are also genuinely worried that Trump’s downsizing of the federal workforce will send Northern Virginia, which supplies 42% of the state’s tax revenue, into a recession. You’d think that might make them amenable to a fatter rainy day fund, but they don’t like the way that Youngkin is trying to get there. From their point of view, Youngkin is only indirectly acknowledging Trump’s threat to the Virginia economy and then trying to address it by taking money from some of their most cherished priorities. The way they see it, they are being asked to do with less because a Republican president is sabotaging the economy. The result is a poisoned relationship that makes almost anything the governor wants to do suspect in their eyes. 

One of Youngkin’s budget amendments would set up a process by which the state could acquire one of James Monroe’s former homes — Oak Hill in Loudoun County — as a state park. This is simply a “language amendment,” it provides no money, just lays out the conditions for a future acquisition. You’d think Virginians of all parties would agree that it’s important to preserve the home of one of the Founding Fathers, but no. Democrats say this will cost money in the future, and they have no intention of approving this amendment in the upcoming session. There are genuine questions about what future expenses might be associated with the upkeep of a 19th-century house, but the backdrop is that Democrats just aren’t in the mood to do much of anything that Youngkin wants.

Amendments to regular bills can be voted up or down without much concern about how they all fit together. The difference with amendments to a budget is that if you tinker here to add something, you need to tinker there to take something out to keep things in balance. Before we get to the main point, a brief budgetary overview is necessary. The state already has a two-year budget in place, so what the legislature passed this year were simply amendments to that plan. What Youngkin is now doing is trying to amend some of those amendments.

Democrats aren’t inclined to make all the changes he wants, but no one can rule out the prospect that if they reject too many of his budget changes, Youngkin might simply veto the entire budget amendment plan. That wouldn’t trigger any government shutdown like Washington often has: The original two-year budget would continue on as it is; Democrats just wouldn’t get any of the things they want in the current amendments. Neither would Republicans, for that matter. (Examples: money to extend the runway at the Roanoke airport and facilitate an economic development project in Pulaski County.) That would be an extreme outcome, but in this political environment, no one can rule it out. 

One place where politics and fiscal policy collide is Youngkin’s proposal to add $80 million for the construction of a building at Virginia Military Institute. Democrats are furious that the VMI Board of Visitors — now dominated by Youngkin appointees — voted against extending the contract of its first Black superintendent. We are now looking at what might be an unprecedented estrangement between a state university and the majority party in the legislature. VMI’s funding is very much in doubt (one Democratic legislator has said it’s time to discuss whether Virginia should fund the school at all). In the most recent session, Democrats blocked two of Youngkin’s appointees to the VMI board; they now have a chance to block his two substitute appointees. Last week, Youngkin fired one of his appointees to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors and appointed former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in his place. When I heard that news, I asked one key Democratic legislator what he thought, and his response is unprintable. Let’s just say it involved some very short and colorful words. Cuccinelli is famous for many things; one of them is using his post to investigate a scientist then at the university for suspected fraud related to his climate change research. In the end, nothing came out of that investigation except lots of headlines, but now, years later, we can expect some more. Democrats might be just as eager to block Cuccinelli’s appointment as they are to send a message to VMI.

Some reconvened sessions are pretty boring affairs. Wednesday’s session might be many things, but it likely won’t be that.