The 2024 legislative session kicked off on January 10th with the House of Delegates unanimously electing Don Scott of Portsmouth the first African American Speaker in the 405-year history of the body.
Scott’s ascension to the Speaker’s dais was the result of Democrats winning 51 of the 100 seats up for grabs in November’s election, putting the party back in the majority in the House by the slimmest of margins.
Along with the ability to elect the Speaker, majority status means Democrats will be in charge of the Committees and Subcommittees in the House where the real work of legislating happens.
As the 26th most senior member of the House and one of the most senior members of the Democratic Caucus, I’ll have a lot of leadership responsibilities this session.
I’m honored to have been appointed Chairman of the House Public Safety Committee by Speaker Scott, as well as Vice Chair of the Courts of Justice Committee. I’m looking forward to once again serving on the General Laws and Rules Committees as well. For subcommittees, I’m chairing the Civil Law Subcommittee of Courts of Justice and the Housing and Consumer Protection Subcommittee of General Laws this session.
As Chairman of Public Safety, I’ll be charged with shepherding through a number of caucus priorities in the area of gun violence prevention, including HB2 our assault weapons ban, my bill to ban unserialized, untraceable, ghost guns, and a number of bills to required safe storage of firearms.
The Courts of Justice Committee is among the busiest in the General Assembly, hearing hundreds of bills in the short 60-day session. As Vice Chair of the full committee and Chair of Civil subcommittee, I’ll be working on legislation to improve access to justice by making Virgnia the 49th of the 50 states to allow class actions. I’ll be working on leveling the playing field between landlords and tenants when they find themselves in court and working on fine tuning of family law and civil procedures.
On the General Laws Committee, I’ll reprise my role as the Chairman of the Housing and Consumer Protection Subcommittee where bills regulating real estate transactions, landlord tenant law, fair housing and other important subjects are addressed.
If those assignments weren’t enough to keep me occupied, I’m also patroning roughly 20 bill myself, including my perennial effort to make it illegal for candidates to convert the funds in their campaign accounts to personal use. I also have a bill to establish a public financing option for candidates that choose to rely on small donations to fund their campaigns.
On behalf of the City of Falls Church, I’ve reintroduced legislation to allow the city to change their charter to allow residents who aren't citizens to participate in local boards and commissions.
My bill, HB 81, will finally abolish the common- law crime of suicide. An outdated provision that needs to be removed from the Code of Virginia.
As I mentioned previously, I’ve reintroduced my bill to prohibit the manufacturing, importing, or selling of ghost guns.
To further my gun violence prevention agenda, HB 175 prohibits individuals from carrying assault weapons in public areas and HB 183 requires firearms to be properly stored in a locked container when minors are present.
Related to the election process, HB 185 requires that challenges to a candidate’s ballot qualifications be made at least 60 days before the election date. This will hopefully prevent deceptive challenges from being submitted for political purposes.
I’ve also got a bill that will enhance consumer protection in Virginia, which allows for class action lawsuits in Virginia's circuit courts.
Working with the Legal Aid Justice Center and Justice Forward, I’ve got two bills that will further improve the criminal justice process by allowing defendants to have more flexibility in jury sentencing as well as protect them from being charged with “failure to appear” when the circumstances are beyond their control.
I’ve got a full legislative agenda, to say the least, and I’m looking forward to working on the issues that my constituents care about the most. In that vein, you can contact my office in Richmond any time, sharing your concerns about a bill or if you have questions about what’s happening - (804) 698-1013 or delmsimon@house.virginia.gov.