Week 6: Crossover week
Crossover week is a weird one—Monday and Tuesday are endlessly long floor sessions, engrossing and passing bills to send across the hall. The rest of the week is super quiet, since most of the bills haven’t been docketed in the other body yet, so subcommittee meetings are often cancelled, or just take up identical cognates to bills already heard.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK, Senator Lashrecse Aird, speaking on amendments to Senator Salim’s SB783 putting guardrails in place for any agreements between local law enforcement and ICE: “ICE is unchecked, with unlimited power, generally speaking, and in the use of this surveillance technology. This is about making sure that when ICE comes into contact with Virginians that we have guardrails; this is not about messaging, this is not about politicizing ICE, but it is about protecting Virginians and making sure that we’re putting Virginians first in their interactions with this unchecked federal agency.”
Last minute hiccups
A handful of bills headed to the floor didn’t quite make it through, either failing on the floor vote or being pulled at the last minute, referred back to committee and continued to next year.
- HB919 (Lopez) would have imposed an 11% additional sales tax on firearms and ammunitiion purchases, with proceeds intended for gun violence prevention.
- HB1462 (Maldonado) would have required insurance companies to cover services provided by a non-licensed (who is studying to become licensed, i.e.) provider under the supervision of a licensed provider.
- HB447 (Simon) would clarify and limit (consistent with a related VA Supreme court ruling) when someone has standing to sue for harm against a neighboring property development.
- HB1432 (Mehta) would reduce the penalties for underage possession or consumption of marijuana and alcohol and clarify that underage persons are not capable of giving consent to search and limits such searches.
- SB770 (Reeves) would have changed from a class 3 (fine only) to a class 1 (jail time) misdemeanor the penalty for trespassing on another’s property to hunt.
- SB209 (DeSteph) would have expanded the crimes that would disqualify a person for geriatric parole.
- SB408 (Stuart) would have created a cause of action for suing if an organization a person donates to does not follow through on the intended charitable purpose.
First tie-break for Lieutenant Governor Hashmi
- LG Hashmi broke a 20-20 tie this week on SB191 (Williams-Graves), a bill to require at least a two-person crew on all freight trains, after Senator Marsden voted with the 19 Republican senators on the bill.
- Senator Carroll Foy passed this same bill in 2024, before it was vetoed by Governor Youngkin.
- Carroll Foy also carried this bill last session, where it died in the House Rules committee.
- At the federal level, a two-person crew has been mandated since 2024 by a Biden-era rule from the Federal Railroad Administration, now under attack from GOP legislators.
Please be seated…
It takes a special sort of legislator to sit in the (very small) minority and either a) not manage to find a single policy idea for their community that they can get bipartisan support for, or b) piss off the majority party so dramatically that all their even non-partisan bills die. Congratulations to THREE Delegates on that dubious achievement, and enjoy doing absolutely nothing useful the rest of this session.
- Del Griffin: highlights include a bill to make it child abuse to assist a child with obtaining gender-affirming care, a bill to bring back voter photo ID and by-excuse only absentee voting, a bill to require the display of the Ten Commandments in K-12 schools, a bill to ban “geoengineering,” and a bill to study repealing personal income taxes.
- Del Hamilton: highlights include the “born-alive abortion” bill, a ban on water fluoridation, a bill to return to presumption against bail, “Sage’s Law” requiring schools tell parents if a child asks to be called by a different name, a bill to mandate pre-abortion informed consent re: Safe Haven Baby Box locations and use.
- Del Garrett: highlights include a bill to remove the Hep-B vaccine from the vaccine schedule, an anti-DEI bill, a bill to repeal driver privilege card (used by Virginia residents who are not US-citizens) issuance, a bill to study the 45 day early voting policy.