Please join me and my legislative colleagues, Delegate Rodney Willett and Delegate Levere Bolling, for a town hall this coming Sunday, April 21st, from 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM. To RSVP for the town hall, please visit bit.ly/4aPU7x4

2024 Session Legislative Update

There were 1,046 bills the General Assembly sent the Governor when we adjourned just over a month ago on Saturday, March 9. The Governor has signed 776 bills, amended 117 bills, and vetoed 153 bills.  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. 

I am excited to share updates on where all of my bills stand after reaching the Governor’s office. Of the eleven bills that passed through both chambers of the General Assembly, the Governor has approved six, amended three, and vetoed two.  Below is a chart of the eleven bills that made it to the Governor’s desk and their current standing: 

Bills Signed Into Law

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

SB 44 - Lucia’s Law - This bill that I carried with Delegate Rodney Willett creates a class 5 felony penalty of child neglect for adults who allow a child to possess a firearm after being notified that the child poses a threat of violence. “Lucia’s Law,” named after 13-year-old Lucia Bremer of Henrico County, was designed to prevent tragedies before they occur, ensuring that firearms are kept out of the hands of juveniles who pose a risk to themselves or others.

SB 46 - This piece of legislation will end legacy admissions and preferential treatment of applicants connected to donors for Virginia’s institutions of higher education. Virginia is now the first state in the country to ban legacy admission for institutions of higher education after the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling in the Students for Fair Admissions case against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

SB 194 - Will allow localities the flexibility to reduce vehicle personal property tax bills by assigning a tax rate different from the vehicle’s assessed rate. 

SB 195 - Establish a stakeholder advisory group to study the current building code and see if they would recommend permitting R-2 occupancies with fewer than six floors to be served by a single staircase. Reducing the number of exits required in these buildings would free up space for much-needed housing units and would allow builders to optimize space in future housing complexes better.

SB 296 - This bipartisan bill will streamline the approval process for residential plats and bring housing online faster and at a lower cost. It is a step forward in increasing the housing supply in Virginia.

SB 358 - This piece of legislation will make the practice of real estate wholesaling, defined in the bill as the buying and selling of at least two contracts annually for compensation, a licensed real estate activity. This change will give the Real Estate Board the authority to regulate wholesaling and will make the process of first-time home buying more accessible by making it more difficult for wholesalers to buy several contracts at a low price and sell them at an inflated price to investors.

Governor’s Amendments

The Governor added amendments to three of my pieces of legislation, altering or completely changing the bills’ original intent: 

SB 196 - Will improve the accuracy of our voter rolls by requiring the Department of Elections to review voter registration sources and information on a yearly basis. It further prohibits the use of data received from other states for list maintenance purposes unless that data includes a unique identifier such as an individual’s social security number or DMV customer identifier number. The Governor’s amendments reinstates challenges through General Registrars instead of the Court system and adds language specifically defining what qualifies as a “unique identifier.”

SB 313 - Required the Board of Contractors to adopt measures to protect consumers planning to install solar panels on residential properties and mandate a disclosure form be used in the sale or lease of a residential solar facility. A disclosure form is an important consumer protection measure that will help hold solar companies to the same standards of transparency and integrity. The Governor’s amendment undermines the intention of this bill by removing the consumer protection requirement, and instead establishing a stakeholder workgroup to simply study the issue. 

SB 361 - Provided meaningful protections and strengthened the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act for children under 13 when using social media sites while avoiding constitutional challenges and concerns with federal preemption by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requirements. The Governor’s amendments to this bill raises the requirement from 13 to 18.

The Governor also amended SB 105 (Senator Lucas), which incorporated two of my bills (SB 127 and SB 128) was amended to delay the 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. As a public school teacher, I am extremely disappointed by this amendment from the Governor. This monumental piece of legislation implements the recommendations from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) report, highlighting the crisis points in Virginia’s education system. To delay enactment impacts our children and our school systems dramatically as we continue to recover from the systemic impacts of decades of underfunding our schools and the COVID-19 pandemic. This legislation, along with the General Assembly’s proposed budget, provided an opportunity to undo decades of underfunding of public education. 

Governor’s Vetoes

The Governor vetoed 2 pieces of my legislation:

SB 428 - This legislation would have provided technical fixes to administering elections using ranked-choice voting. In 2020, the General Assembly authorized a pilot program for certain localities to opt-in to using ranked-choice voting in local elections if they elected to. Arlington County was the first locality to use ranked-choice voting in their board elections this past fall, and the Department of Elections issued a report after that election asking for technical policy fixes to make ranked-choice voting elections run smoother in the localities that decide to administer elections this way. This veto is of a policy his election administration department is asking for, which makes the Governor’s decision all the more confusing. This bill was about governing effectively, and I am disappointed he vetoed it. 

SB 606 - Would have required Virginia to re-enter a multi-state compact to fight voter fraud, known as ERIC. The Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, is a multi-state partnership that experts across the political spectrum say is the only reliable, secure way for states to share voter data and information securely with each other and is an essential tool for election officials to prevent people from being registered to vote in multiple states. Virginia was one of the founding members of ERIC in 2012 under the McDonnell administration. I am very disappointed in Governor Youngkin’s decision to veto SB 606 and his continued insistence on playing politics with our election security.

In addition to my newsletter, you can continuously stay updated on my bills through the Legislative Information System (LIS). Livestreams and past recordings of Session and committee meetings can all be found at this link. Legislation, meeting calendars, and committee information can be found here.

Eid Mubarak! Thank you to the Ismaili community for their hospitality and friendship. It is always a pleasure to join them at their Jamatkhana!

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I was glad to join Freedom Virginia, Delegate Destiny Bolling, and my constituent, Savannah, earlier in April to ask the Governor of Virginia to sign the Prescription Drug Affordability Board. Unfortunately, the Governor vetoed this bipartisan bill. The cost of prescription drugs is too high. We all know it, and we should do something about it. I will continue to work with my colleagues in the General Assembly to tackle the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs, which continues to place severe economic burdens on Virginians of all ages.

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Budget Update

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, public schools, and children’s future. The Governor returned the budget bill to the General Assembly with a record 233 amendments. His amendments include: 

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.

I want to highlight some significant investments in the agreed-upon General Assembly budget that passed both legislative chambers on a bipartisan basis back in March. While this is certainly not a comprehensive analysis, below is a selection of some of the key General Assembly budget provisions for which we will continue to fight and advocate. 

Higher Education:

Provides an increased funding of $205.4M over the biennium to increase access and mitigate tuition increases. 

Includes a $55M increase over the biennium to support financial aid and operating costs for the Virginia Community College System.

Grants an additional $79.5M to support financial aid initiatives. 

Health:

Retains the landmark investment the Governor made by fully funding all priority one developmental disability (DD) waiver slots, but acknowledges that funding all slots must also include support to the provider network to ensure there is capacity. As such, this budget includes a 3% rate increase for DD services each year over the biennium and a quarterly phase-in of slots to control the uptake. 

Fully funds $745.2M over the biennium for the medicaid and children’s health insurance forecasts. 

Allots $150M in fiscal year (FY) 2025 as contingency funds to reflect higher rates of medicaid enrollment than previously forecasted. 

Adds $40M over the biennium to support a value-based purchasing program which incentivizes higher staffing levels at nursing homes. 

Includes $11.3M over the biennium to increase medicaid dental rates by 3%. 

Provides $27.6M over the biennium to continue developing behavioral health crisis infrastructure. 

Adds $6.2M over the biennium to fund community health workers in local health departments. 

Includes $5.5M over the biennium for Child Advocacy Centers.

K-12 Public Education:

Overall includes $1.2B more than the introduced budget.

Provides $243.1M over the biennium to continue the hold harmless provided by the State as a result of the elimination of the grocery sales tax.

Provides $539.1M over the biennium to account for the state’s share of a 3% salary increase each year for teachers and support staff.

Adds $116.7M to the Governor’s introduced budget for a total of $527.8M over the biennium to support early childhood care and education programs. 

Includes $371.3M over the biennium to implement recommendations from the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission’s (JLARC) study on K-12 funding in Virginia. 

Commerce:

Provides $175M for the Virginia Housing Trust Fund to create and preserve affordable housing. 

Includes $114M to support life science research initiatives at UVA, VT, VCU, and ODU, which supports creating a rival to North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

State Employees:

Includes $178.8M in FY2025 and $366.4M in FY2026 for a 3% salary increase each year.

Transportation:

Provides $65M in FY2025 and $84.5M in FY2026 for additional operating assistance for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, includes $25,000 for a joint subcommittee to explore long term cost-containment strategies. 

To find a comprehensive summary-level assessment of key general fund changes proposed by the Governor in December 2023, the General Assembly in March 2024, and the Governor in April

2024 compared to the current budget as approved in Chapter 1, Acts of Assembly 2023, Special Session I, please visit this link to view The Commonwealth Institute’s budget breakdown.

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Putting families first is the opposite of backward. It’s forward-thinking, bipartisan, and good for communities, the economy, and our future. I am always proud to stand with a legislature that invests in people and invests in our Commonwealth.

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Two weeks ago, I wrote an opinion piece in the Richmond Times Dispatch with my Senate colleagues, Senators Lashrecse Aird, Lamont Bagby, and Ghazala Hashmi, about investing in a state budget that prioritizes Virginia’s children and public education over tax breaks for the wealthy and profitable corporations. 

All children deserve to attend a public school that has highly qualified educators in every classroom and that creates an environment to meet their potential. Yet, for too long, the state has failed to live up to this promise and has underfunded schools by billions of dollars annually, according to a recent report by JLARC, the state’s non-partisan research agency. While the needs of our schools are great, Governor Youngkin proposed a state budget with hundreds of millions of dollars less direct aid for public K-12 schools and effective pay cuts for educators. The school cuts were needed in the Governor’s budget to give multi-millionaires an average of nearly

$10,000 in state tax breaks annually while raising taxes on low and moderate-income families. Fortunately, state lawmakers sent Governor Youngkin a bipartisan budget that instead prioritizes historic investments in our students and educators.The Governor claims he can have both revenue reductions and spending increases, but families know budgets don’t work like that. The Governor proposed a budget with $300 million less in direct aid for public K-12 schools than current spending levels. His proposed changes to educator salaries eroded over time inflation. When we add it all up, our budget provides Henrico County with 46 million, Chesterfield with 55 million, and Richmond City with 24 million more dollars for public education than his does. That’s a real commitment to public education. The General Assembly sent the Governor a strong budget with the high-impact investments for students that Virginia families are calling for. With the bipartisan budget sitting on his desk, Governor Youngkin must make a choice: invest in student success and our future economy, or fight for another tax handout to big corporations and his wealthy friends.

You can read the full op-ed here. 

This year, Nahyla was the Senate page from western Henrico! She did a fabulous job and ended her time in the program by defending her bill on the Senate floor in the pages’ mock session! I can’t wait to see what she does next!

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If you would like to reach out and discuss any of my legislative priorities, share an opinion, or send a scheduling request if you’d like me to come and share a legislative update at a community or organization meeting, please do not hesitate to contact my office at [email protected]. 

I am also preparing resolutions to celebrate notable achievements of residents of the 16th Senate district and memorial resolutions for members of our community that we lost this year. If you have a suggestion for a member of our community that you would like to be honored, please email me at [email protected].


Yours in service,