Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed 1,131 bills this year, which means I could write a column posing 1,131 questions about how those measures will play out. Don’t worry — I’m not. Instead, I’ll settle for a more modest 10 questions about the new laws that take effect today.
1. How will the legal challenges to new gun laws get resolved?
This seems easy to answer: It seems certain that the lawsuits against Virginia’s new ban on high-capacity weapons popularly known as “assault weapons” will eventually wind up with the Supreme Court, either the Virginia Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court. Until then, I’m not sure this is worth many words because it’s not the public that needs to be persuaded one way or another; it’s the justices on our highest courts. That won’t stop many commentators anyway.
In the meantime, we have the specter of many sheriffs and commonwealth’s attorneys — often in Southwest and Southside Virginia — declaring that they won’t enforce these laws because they consider them unconstitutional. All these officials know very well that they are not the ones who get to declare a law unconstitutional, but they also know that their declarations are good politics in conservative areas.
The pronouncements do pose something of a challenge to Attorney General Jay Jones. During a visit to Danville for a crime reduction roundtable last week, Jones said: “This is something we feel very strongly about, so we’re going to pursue this in court.” What does that mean, exactly, though? He’ll certainly be pursuing these issues in court as lower-court rulings against the new laws get appealed. But will he actually file suit against some sheriff or commonwealth’s attorney? Jones was more circumspect on that: “If we see some challenges, we’re going to get involved as best we can. I’m going to be doing my job; I hope they’re going to be doing their job.”
I will gently point out that these announcements may not be as defiant as they might seem. Every law enforcement agency has priorities, and not every law gets enforced. Take speeding. Every day people break the law on speeding. Some localities are stricter on that than others. However, we don’t see sheriffs declaring, “I’m not going to enforce the speed limit.” They just don’t set up speed traps. What’s different here is the announcement that a certain law won’t get enforced — and, of course, the import of the law in question. The only certainty here is billable hours.
2. How much will college tuition rise?
When then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin introduced this budget back in December, it included a cap on college tuition. The General Assembly did away with that. The higher education lobby hates tuition caps, but this does pose a question: How much will we see tuition increase? And how will that fit into the “affordability” agenda that Democrats have pushed? Those two things seem at odds with each other.
3. How will the increase in minimum wage and paid family medical leave play out?
This is where “affordability” becomes a definitional issue. If you’re seeing your pay rise because of the minimum wage increase, or you’re now getting paid sick leave, these measures definitely make life more affordable. If you’re a business owner trying to make the ledger work out, these measures make things less affordable. Critics of these measures warned they’d lead to less hiring. Will they? Time will tell, as it always does.
4. How does the legalization of retail cannabis sales work out?
This is another question where we won’t know the answer for years — especially since sales won’t begin until this time next year. This isn’t just legalizing sales; it’s authorizing an entirely new (legal) business sector — from cultivation to processing to retail stores. It’s not often that the state passes a law allowing an entirely new business sector to rise up. Spanberger had wanted to go slower than some cannabis advocates desired because she wanted to be more cautious about the details of licensing and regulation; she got that with the later start date.
One question yet unanswered is what will happen with all the rogue cannabis stores we’ve seen spring up anyway. Let’s go back to the earlier question about some sheriffs saying they won’t enforce those gun laws. Many law enforcement officials have essentially decided they’re not going to enforce existing cannabis laws — because they’re too confusing and the penalties aren’t that severe anyway. One chief of police in Southwest Virginia told me that no one had ever complained about the cannabis store in his town and he had more pressing situations to deal with. Once there’s a legal cannabis store, you can bet that the owners will complain if there’s an unlicensed cannabis seller across the street.
5. What does the George Mason University-Averett University partnership look like?
One of the most significant things in the budget didn’t involve money at all. It was simply authorizing George Mason, a public college in Fairfax County, to enter into a partnership with Averett, a private college in Danville, on various workforce issues. Will these be just happy words? Or will this lead to something important? Symbolically, it’s a big deal. Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia have programs in Northern Virginia. Now George Mason is allowed to plant its green-and-yellow flag in Southside. The message: George Mason is a rising power in the state, no longer just a regional university. But what does this look like on the ground?
6. Where does the Interstate 81 study lead?
The budget also includes language directing the secretary of transportation to conduct a study into a possible public-private partnership to expand Interstate 81. This brings back memories of an earlier public-private consortium to expand I-81: the STAR Solutions project in the early 2000s that never came to fruition. Will this be just another study on the shelf, or actually lead to something?
7. Where does the college athletics study lead?
Here’s yet another question that comes out of language in the budget. State Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, wanted — and got — what could be an all-encompassing study about the funding of college sports. The language directs the General Assembly’s investigative arm to “evaluate approaches taken by other states to create sustainable funding models for intercollegiate athletics.” Notably, it also calls for looking at the limits that Virginia imposes on how many mandatory student fees can be used to fund athletics. For some schools, such as my alma mater James Madison University, these limits are quite high — 60% of the school’s athletic funding can come from student fees. For Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, it’s 20%. Most importantly, this study is based on the proposition that Virginia has an economic development interest in college sports. We just had a bruising debate over tax breaks for data centers; are we about to have one over how much students should have to pay for their school’s sports program? The argument in favor of data center tax breaks is that they’re an investment that produces more tax revenue for state and local governments; you could also argue that it’s fine to make students pay more because it’s good for the economy.
8. Are we going to see approvals for solar facilities increase or decrease?
One new law “bans the bans” — meaning local governments are no longer allowed to ban solar facilities. Instead, they must take up each one, although they’re still allowed to vote them down. My sense is that this isn’t going to do much to change the hostility to “industrial solar” in many rural areas. My own county, Botetourt, is a case in point. There were recently two solar facilities proposed. Signs flowered across the county: “Keep Botetourt Green.” That’s a fine slogan, but neither of the places where solar was proposed are likely to stay green forever. Both are in growth zones; if the landowners aren’t allowed to make money on solar, they’re likely to make money by converting that property to subdivisions. In the end, both were rejected at various points in the process. The message seemed clear: Botetourt doesn’t want solar, even if the alternative is more subdivisions. The risk for solar opponents is that this might trigger the legislature to someday take the power to deal with solar facilities away from local governments altogether.
9. How many localities will hold referendums on raising local sales taxes for schools?
Virginia has had a patchwork system: Nine localities, but only nine, have been allowed to hold a local referendum on whether to raise the local sales tax with the money going to schools. Now all can. Critics say we will still have a patchwork system of tax rates, but at least everyone has the same power. How will localities take advantage of this new authority? And, if you’re a critic, how does this promote affordability?
10. What will be the economic impact of an inland port in Washington County?
This is definitely a long-range question. We know that Virginia’s existing inland port in Warren County — a cargo freight hub that expedites shipments to and from Hampton Roads — has led to perhaps 8,000 trucking and warehousing jobs in the northern Shenandoah Valley. This budget provides $20 million to start construction of a second inland port, this one in Washington County. It’s envisioned to be on a smaller scale, so the economic impact will likely be less, but all things are relative. Even one-quarter of those spinoff jobs would be a huge impact in Southwest Virginia. Put this one in your “tickler file,” and we’ll come back to it in the years ahead.
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