As we finished out last week in Richmond, we're continuing to move at a rapid pace this session. I've had a couple of my busiest days yet - between meeting with advocacy groups and presenting legislation, the days are flying by!
An "Average" Session Day
I always tell folks there is no such thing as an "average" session day. That is to say, that no 2 days are ever truly alike. However, a few things remain the same - the days are long and the issues we cover are diverse.
In the Morning
As an example, my longest day last week was Thursday. I started the morning at 7:30am, presenting my bill on real estate disclosures in a Counties, Cities, and Towns Subcommittee. I then went straight to my Public Safety Subcommittee at 8am for a fairly long bill docket that covered correctional facilities, the Parole Board, law enforcement officer training, and even Space Force.
Even though the subcommittee was still meeting, I rushed back to my office just after 9am to meet with folks from the Culmore Clinic of Falls Church, plus a few other advocacy groups both in-person and virtually.
At 10am, I met with the Northern Virginia Association of Realtors for their lobby day in one of the conference rooms. By the time I finished there, I needed to run over to the Capitol for our 11am caucus meeting, which happens every day an hour before the floor session begins at noon.
In the Afternoon
Because our committee agendas are getting longer, we had a relatively short session that day and I was headed to the General Laws Committee about 1:15pm. As soon as the full committee was over, I chaired my Housing Subcommittee which had 16 bills on the docket.
While I pride myself on running an efficient committee meeting, I still only had a few minutes in between before heading to the Firearms Subcommittee meeting at 4pm. Unfortunately, we then had to delay the meeting time as we waited for a quorum - several of the subcommittee members were in another committee that was running over time. We finally began at 5pm, completing the docket about 6:30pm. This gave me just enough time to return to my office to drop off my bill folders and floor calendar before heading to our weekly Thursday evening caucus meeting at 7pm.
Whew!