Four of Virginia’s top state legislators on Thursday discussed rising electricity bills, criminal records and the potential impact of federal job cuts on Virginia, among other issues, as part of Cardinal News’ second annual “Cardinal Way: Civility Rules” luncheon.
Speaker of the House of Delegates Don Scott, D-Portsmouth; Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County; Deputy House Minority Leader Israel O’Quinn, R-Washington County; and Senate Minority Whip Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, spoke to a crowd of more than 100 attendees.
Over soup, salad and desserts at the Jefferson Center in Roanoke, the four lawmakers reflected on their bipartisan successes from the past General Assembly session and what might have been. Cardinal News Founding Editor Dwayne Yancey moderated the discussion.
O’Quinn, Scott and Stanley discussed legislation that supporters say will lower the monthly bills of Appalachian Power residential customers. The bill, which some lawmakers dubbed the “APCo Rate Reduction Act,” went through a number of changes before it ultimately passed the General Assembly without opposition.
“The good part of it,” O’Quinn said, “is that everybody on all ends of the spectrum, in the House and the Senate, everybody left just a little bit agitated. But they left a little bit agitated on a bill that passed the House 97-0. And frankly, that’s the sign of a good bill — when you leave and not everybody got what they wanted but they still feel like in the end that we got something accomplished.”
Like all of the other legislation that the General Assembly passed during the recent 45-day session that adjourned this past Saturday, that bill now heads to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s desk for him to sign, veto or amend.
It began with a push to allow Appalachian Power to package certain large assets and expenses into interest-bearing bonds to sell to investors, a financing mechanism known as securitization.
Various additional measures were tacked on as the House and Senate advanced the bills through their respective chambers. While each chamber passed a version of the bill, they differed in the details, leading lawmakers to form a conference committee to come to an agreement.
Besides securitization, the provisions of the final bill include prohibiting Appalachian’s rate increases from taking effect from November through February each year; prohibiting the utility from charging reconnection fees from July 1 through March 1, 2026; and requiring Appalachian to consider residential seasonal rates and alternatives to budget billing.
The average Appalachian Power residential bill has risen about $50 over the past three years to about $174, but some lawmakers say that they have heard from constituents who face bills of hundreds of dollars more, or even above $1,000 a month.
Stanley said he supported the legislation to reduce Appalachian Power’s rates but thinks that more work needs to be done to lower electric bills. He said that many people must choose whether to pay their electric bill or pay for other essentials such as food or shoes for their children.
“I applaud those that worked on the APCo bill that did pass,” Stanley said. “I think we still have to be more realistic because even the rates that drop, it’s 30, 40, 50 bucks, how long does it last? Who knows?”
Among the successes that Stanley mentioned were his SB 905, which promotes internet safety education for students, and his SB 908, which addresses how schools can deal with cyberbullying involving their students.
“In my time, we had bullying right there on the playground. But now we have bullying in telephones and on the internet and social media, and it’s devastating. We see kids killing themselves,” Stanley said.
Scott said that the work that grew out of a bipartisan House committee on rural health care that he convened last year, shortly after becoming speaker, led to a slew of bills and budget amendments this year.
He also talked about the state budget’s $50 million for Hurricane Helene relief. He visited Southwest Virginia in the aftermath of the late September storm and met residents whose homes had been damaged or destroyed by the massive flooding.
“Wherever you are, in Southside or Hampton Roads, all of us are in the same boat together. So if I see something in Southwest that’s going bad, we have an opportunity to fix it,” Scott said.
Surovell described his SB 1466, which would allow some criminal convictions to be sealed from view, saying that 1.6 million Virginians have some sort of criminal history and their records often keep them from obtaining certain jobs.
With Republicans opposed to the bill, lawmakers modified it so that certain offenses, such as sex crimes and stalking charges, could not be sealed, ensuring bipartisan support, Surovell said.
“What it really means is that there are going to be tens of thousands of people that are going to be able to go and get better jobs for themselves because they’re going to get that conviction from 10, 20, 30 years ago sealed,” he said.
Reflecting on where he wished the General Assembly had made more progress, Surovell said, “There’s a whole series of energy decisions that we have to make in our commonwealth” as the climate changes and as electricity demand rises rapidly.
“Every locality, they want the data centers, but they don’t want the solar to power it, right? Some people don’t want gas. Some people don’t want coal. We’ve got to figure out a way to power this. We haven’t been able to crack that nut,” he said.
As an example, Surovell pointed to a bill dealing with siting of utility-scale solar facilities that didn’t even get a Democratic consensus to pass the Democrat-majority Senate and failed to advance out of a House subcommittee.
“The energy conversation has become very politicized, and I wish it wasn’t,” he said.
The lawmakers also discussed bills that would have changed what utilities must pay if they fail to meet state-mandated clean-energy goals and would have changed stormwater management regulations for localities outside of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
After their remarks, the legislators took several questions from the audience. One attendee asked them to address the “elephant in the room”: how federal job cuts and other actions coming out of Washington, D.C., will impact Virginia.
Thousands of such cuts have already been announced since President Donald Trump took office Jan. 20. On Wednesday, a memo from the federal Office of Personnel Management and Budget instructed federal agencies to submit plans for “large-scale reductions in force” by mid-March, according to multiple news media such as Politico.
Scott said he was “very concerned” and noted that he convened a committee specifically to examine what impact Trump’s policies will have on the commonwealth.
“I just think we have to be really, really thoughtful in how we respond. I think we have a responsibility to do that,” he said.
Scott said he sees a trend of people villainizing government workers and he hopes that changes.
“I think we’ve got to make it cool and sexy to do public service again,” he said.
Stanley compared impending job losses in Northern Virginia, which is home to an outsized share of federal government employees and contractors, to job losses in the tobacco, textile and manufacturing industries that Southside Virginia has suffered over the past several decades.
“This happens. The debt is unsustainable. It’s our taxpayer money being wasted, and we need to cut, and there are going to be — when you have cuts, you have things that happen where people lose jobs,” Stanley said, adding that “it’s the resiliency of the people in the face of this that overcomes.”
Although the four lawmakers — two Republicans and two Democrats — have expressed their differences on the House and Senate floors, and did so again during Thursday’s luncheon, there were also notes of bipartisanship and unity.
Their remarks were often punctuated by moments of good-natured humor, such as when Stanley quipped that he “grew up in Northern Virginia against my will” because his father was in the U.S. Navy.
“We all are friends when the cameras go off and the lights go down,” Stanley said of himself and his fellow legislators.
Scott said that “as much as we seem to be divided in this country, there still are a lot of things that unite us.”
“I hope that those things that divide us won’t end up destroying us, because this is the greatest country on the planet, and we are a beacon for the entire world,” he said.