Dear Friend,

This Wednesday, April 17, the General Assembly will reconvene in Richmond to address the Governor’s amendments and vetoes to bills passed during the 2024 Session which ended just over a month ago on Saturday, March 9.

This week’s newsletter discusses the outcomes of my legislation that were sent to the Governor’s desk, provides reflections on my time in Newport News for the Regional Convening on Maternal Health, shares information provided in a briefing to the Senate of Virginia on the Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge disaster in Baltimore, and highlights select community meetings from this past week. Thank you for reading and staying informed. 

Reconvened Session and My Legislation

On Wednesday, April 17,  the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates will be back in Richmond for Reconvened Session. Given the large number of bills that were either returned to the General Assembly with a veto or with amendments, we may be in Richmond for more than one day. The full list of the Governor’s amendments and vetoes has now been shared following the April 8 deadline. According to the Virginia Constitution, amendments require simple majorities to accept or reject; however, vetoes can be overridden only by a two-thirds majority vote in both Chambers. Given the Governor’s historic use of veto power, we will have an extensive agenda to complete during the Reconvened Session. 

Additionally, the Governor has returned HB30, the Budget Bill agreed to jointly by the Senate and the House, with over 200 amendments. This historic number of amendments will require considerable discussion by the appropriations committees and the budget conferees. We will likely need to return for a Special Session for a full consideration of the budget. Next steps will be further decided by the leadership of both Chambers.

Bills Signed Into Law

Legislation that has been signed by the Governor does not need additional action by the General Assembly and will not be addressed during Reconvened Session. Five of my bills were signed into law in recent weeks, and will go into effect on July 1 of this year:

• SB 232 -  Provides protections for tenants in manufactured home parks, ensuring that these tenants have rights similar to tenants in other situations such as apartment communities.
• SB 239 - Authorizes the Commonwealth of Virginia to become a part of a new interstate Compact that enables licensed social workers to apply for multi-state licenses, allowing them to practice in other compact-member states. Virginia is the sixth state to enact such legislation, and the Compact will take effect when it is enacted by a total of seven states.
• SB 250 - Instructs the Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) to include a provision that allows reimbursement, under specific conditions, for remote ultrasound procedures and remote fetal non-stress tests. This bill helps to address disparities of care in rural areas of the Commonwealth and in low-income communities.
• SB 272 - Establishes proficiency-based student-to-teacher ratios for our English Language Learner students in our K-12 public schools. This legislation passed with supportive budgetary increases which the Governor has sharply reduced in his budget amendments. Full implementation of this legislation will depend on the outcomes of our budget negotiations.
• SB 277 - Instructs the Board of Health to convene the State Health Services Plan Task Force to make recommendations on the expedited review of clinical projects that are subject to the Certificate of Public Need (COPN) requirements.

Governor’s Amendments

The Governor added amendments to some of my legislation, altering or completely eliminating the bills’ original intent: 

• SB 105 (Senator Lucas) which incorporated two of my bills (SB 227 and SB 228) was amended to delay implementation of the legislation. The Governor’s amendment states that the legislation will not become effective unless reenacted by the 2025 Session of the General Assembly. The Governor’s amendment is truly regrettable. This vital legislation implements the recommendations from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) report which highlights the crisis points in Virginia’s education system. To delay enactment impacts our children and our school systems at a particularly precarious time. This legislation, along with the General Assembly’s proposed budget, provides an opportunity to undo decades of our underfunding of public education. 
• SB 237, the Right to Contraception Act, was drastically altered by the Governor. He returned a substitute to us that strips the legislation entirely and recasts it as a Section 1 bill, effectively making it a policy statement rather than codified law. Further, he removed all references to contraceptives–which the original bill is specifically designed to protect–including IUDs, condoms, birth control pills, and emergency contraceptives. I joined our House patron, Delegate Marcia ‘Cia’ Price, in responding to the Governor’s actions, and our press statement highlights the damage done by the substituted language. The legislation and the Governor’s utterly meaningless substitute has garnered national attention, including a response from the Biden-Harris Campaign. However, the Governor has continued to double-down on his stance, stating that the Right to Contraception Act “goes too far.” At a time when women’s access to reproductive health care, contraception, IVF, and routine services are under attack across the country, Virginians deserve to know where their elected leaders stand on protecting their rights to make private healthcare decisions with their providers. 
• The Governor amended SB 238, known as the Contraceptive Equity Act, to include language exempting nongovernmental health plan sponsors from providing contraception based on “sincerely held religious or ethical beliefs.” Simply put, the addition of this language means that anyone could be denied birth control coverage for any reason because he did not provide a definition of “sincerely held” beliefs; nor is that terminology defined in the Virginia Code. Rather than meaningfully expanding access to contraception to more Virginians, the Governor’s amendment harms healthcare access. 

Governor’s Vetoes

• SB 235 simply clarified the previous parental notification legislation that the Governor himself enthusiastically championed and signed into law in 2022. Some school districts across Virginia have abused the original legislation by enacting book bans within our public schools as a part of a larger national trend driven by extremists’ efforts to ban books from our school and public libraries and to target our professional school librarians. Because my bill restored the 2022 language that clarified the distinctions between parental notification and book bans, the Governor vetoed the bill. His actions place him in alignment with those extremists who continue to attack the right to read. My full statement on the Governor’s veto can be accessed here. 
• SB 236 allowed full-time faculty at Virginia’s colleges and universities to request aggregated, nonconfidential case data on evictions. Sadly, Virginia leads other states in the number of its localities with high numbers of evictions. A comprehensive and robust reporting of data from across the state would help to inform policy makers on how to combat our eviction crisis; it would better guide our social services, and it would help those organizations that support housing concerns. Data collection and effective analysis ought not to be a partisan issue. However, the party-line vote from Republicans in the House of Delegates and the Governor’s own veto is a testament to the ways in which partisanship hinders common sense policy. More can be found in my statement issued with RVA Eviction Lab’s Dr. Benjamin Teresa and the Virginia Poverty Law Center’s Christie Marra. 
• SB 276 directed the State Corporation Commission to convene a work group to study the feasibility of implementing energy upgrade programs for eligible customers. The ultimate goal of the legislation was to establish a program that would enable low- and moderate-income families access affordable renewable energy and energy efficiency upgrades through collaboration with our utility providers. Apparently, the Governor disagreed with this bill that received bipartisan support in both Chambers. I am not sure if he was concerned that the SCC might concur with the idea that energy upgrade programs for Virginians are a “good thing.” The Governor vetoed the legislation. 

The Budget

During the 2024 General Assembly Session, members of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee (SFAC) and the House Appropriations Committee agreed to a historic budget that prioritized our public education system, health care, support for Virginia’s families, and more. Over the past several weeks, the Governor made known his unhappiness with our efforts to invest in our communities and in our collective future. He called the budget agreed to by the majority of the General Assembly a “Backwards Budget” and traveled across Virginia to expand on that narrative. He returned the budget bill to us with an unprecedented number of amendments that, in essence, rewrote the bill.

The Governor continues to claim that his new budget is a ‘Common Ground Budget,’ but his words and actions are not aligned – not when he has gutted the budget by submitting 233 amendments. His amendments truly send Virginia backwards because they make significant cuts to areas of greatest need, including the following:

• Slashing over $162 million earmarked for at-risk students 
• Subtracting $635 million of state direct aid for K-12 public schools, drastically impacting our highest-poverty and rural schools
• Removing a compromise amendment that mandates Virginia rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a regional cooperation that has generated over $827 million for Virginia

The public is able to follow the General Assembly’s work during Reconvened Session using the Legislative Information System (LIS). I will also continue to provide updates through this newsletter, and on Facebook, X, Threads, and Instagram.

Regional Convening on Maternal Health

On Wednesday morning, I traveled to Newport News to join legislators, healthcare providers, and advocates for the Regional Convening on Maternal Health sponsored by Sentara Health to learn best practices and hear expert recommendations on reducing health disparities within our communities. Our speakers included Congressman Bobby Scott, as well as my colleague, Virginia Senator Mamie Locke. 

This session, the General Assembly passed legislation such as my legislation expanding remote ultrasounds and fetal non-stress tests, as well as critical legislation addressing unconscious bias training for health care providers and health insurance coverage for doula care, both of which Senator Locke has worked hard to secure passage in the General Assembly. Legislative efforts such as these are necessary tools to address disparities within maternal health care. 

In Virginia, we continue to witness many lower income Virginians and communities of color suffer disproportionately high rates of maternal and infant mortality as well as lack of access to vital resources. Collaborative efforts across many agencies, private organizations, and community service providers are needed to address these issues.

Key Bridge Disaster Briefing

I appreciate the work of our Chair of the Senate Committee on Transportation – Senator Jennifer Boysko – in convening a briefing for our Transportation Committee to hear directly from the Secretary of Transportation, Shep Miller, and officials from the Port of Virginia about the impacts of the tragic disaster at the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Maryland. In our Friday briefing, we learned that the Port of Virginia has ramped up its services to accommodate the discharge of cargo in Virginia, rather than in Baltimore, and thus ensure that impacts to the supply chain are minimized. The Port has added cranes to facilitate the discharge of cargo and to effectively coordinate cargo flow to ground transportation, including rail. Officials further clarified that Baltimore was not a site of oil shipments and therefore no impacts to international oil supplies in the United States have been impacted.

Port of Virginia officials also addressed the situation of cruise ships that are docking now in Norfolk and other Eastern US ports and providing ground transportation for passengers to return to their original points of origin. We also heard that the Port of Baltimore is anticipated to re-open by July 1, 2024.

We also heard from Commissioner Stephen Brich who spoke to the concerns about the highway network  between Virginia and Maryland, as well as our own bridges in Virginia. Immediate impacts, according to the Commissioner, include about 500 additional trucks each day serving the Port of Virginia. Greatest impacts will be on traffic congestion at the Monitor Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel and the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel. This impact should be temporary for the next two months; once the Port of Baltimore re-opens, cargo will once again be delivered in its usual patterns and distributed among the ports of the Eastern seaboard.

As I learn more details, we will continue to share updates about the Key Bridge disaster and its impacts on Virginia.

Select Community Engagements

Wednesday evening, I joined the Chesterfield Democratic Committee to provide a General Assembly legislative update on the budget and on a few bills signed, amended, or vetoed by the Governor. As legislators return to Richmond this Wednesday for Reconvened Session, Democrats are ready to push for protections for reproductive health care, for fully funding our public education, supporting working families, and much more. 

Thursday afternoon, I joined Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao and the Dean of VCUarts Carmenita Higginbotham to learn about the new CoStar Center for Arts and Innovation. This state-of-the-art multidisciplinary facility will host events ranging from opera to quantum computing and help build industry partnerships that will give students real-world experience. The Center is expected to open in 2027.

Later that evening, I attended the Richmond History Makers (RHM) 19th Annual Valentine event. I was delighted to celebrate Breanna Diaz and Narissa Rahaman who both individually received the Civil Rights and Advocacy Award acknowledging their work at the American Civil Liberties Union-Virginia and Equality Virginia, respectively. For the past 125 years, RHM has helped shape our region through community engagement and documenting our history. In recent years, RHM has recognized the individuals and organizations that have significantly impacted the Greater Richmond Region. Congratulations to all of the many amazing honorees!

Eid al-Fitr

As the holy month of Ramadan concluded on Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning brought the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. I know that, for Muslims around the world, this sacred month has been filled with evening gatherings of the community to break fast. Many iftar hosts in Virginia have also invited the community at large to share meals and to pray for healing in the world. I thank our RVA Muslim community for the exceptional charity work that has been done this month, as well as throughout the year. I know that several mosques in the area make it their mission to distribute food and other necessities to those in our community who are struggling. For those who are celebrating the joyous holiday, I wish a very sincere Eid Mubarak.

Connecting With My Office

My office can be reached at the following:

Email:  [email protected] 

Phone:  804.698.7515

If you were forwarded this email, you can sign up to receive my office’s weekly newsletter here. 

— Ghazala

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