How a bill becomes a law

The legislative process in Virginia is almost exactly like what you remember from the Schoolhouse Rock video with the singing scroll of paper known as Bill. You remember him, right? He’s just a lonely old bill, and he’s sitting there on Capitol Hill? He was born as an idea from a constituent who called his congressman, who sat down at a typewriter, and typed him up, then he went to committee, then he’s signed and goes to the other House, then he waits to be signed, but explains that he’s worried about being Vetoed? Yeah, that’s the one.

In Virginia it works almost the same way, except since the legislature only meets part-time, 60 days in this year’s “long session” we can’t just start over if the Governor vetoes a bill. We have to wait until next year to start the process over. So if the Governor likes most of a bill, but not all of it, or wants it to do more, he can make recommendations for amendments, which the General Assembly can vote up or down. If we accept the recommendations, the bill becomes law. If we don’t the Governor can still veto it, or he can sign it as we originally sent it to him.

We are now in the week between the Governor’s deadline to sign, veto or recommend amendments to bills (April 11, 2020) and the Reconvene Session where we decide what to do about them (April 22, 2020). When we do go back, the General Assembly will have just over 100 bills with recommendations (but only one veto) to act on.

Like many things these days, this will be an unprecedented Reconvene Session. We won’t meet indoors in the House Chamber, because it would be impossible to adhere to social distancing and sanitation practices. Instead, the Senate will convene at the Science Museum of Virginia and the House will gather outdoors on the Capitol Grounds.

The setting won’t be the only thing this session will be remembered for. It’s unprecedented in more substantive ways as well, as this is likely the first time since Reconstruction, we’ve had what you can call a progressive or liberal majority in both legislative chambers with a like-minded Governor.

I'm proud to report that 14 of my bills passed this session, nearly doubling my production from my first 6 years in one session.

The Governor signed the Virginia Values Act, making Virginia the first Southern state to provide sweeping anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people - a bill I was proud to help craft as it came through one of the three subcommittees I chair.

Governor Northam also signed new laws to strike discriminatory language from Virginia’s Acts of Assembly, deleting 98 instances of overtly discriminatory language still on the Commonwealth’s books. This includes laws that banned interracial marriage, blocked school integration, and prohibited black and white Virginians from living in the same neighborhoods. While many of these Acts of Assembly have been overturned by court decisions or subsequent legislation, they had remained enshrined in law.

The Governor also signed a criminal justice reform agenda that includes measures raising the felony larceny threshold; permanently eliminating driver’s license suspensions for unpaid fines, fees, and court costs; raising the age of juvenile transfer to adult court; and reforming parole, while decriminalizing simple possession of marijuana and sealing the records of prior convictions.

He also signed bills to make voting easier, to encourage the use of clean energy, and to enact common sense gun safety reforms. Any of these would be screaming headlines in any other year, but this year they barely made it into my column for lack of column inches!

Among the recommendations we will have to consider are amendments delaying the implementation of incremental increases to the minimum wage on a path toward $15 an hour, allowing local government employees to collectively bargain, and encouraging the use of project labor agreements and prevailing wage clauses in local government contracts. Although these progressive items may be put off a few months, they will become law, something unthinkable given the political landscape in Virginia a year ago at this time.

The 2020 General Assembly Session will go down in history, regardless of what we do, or where or how we do it at our Reconvene Session, and I couldn’t be more honored to be a part of it. Thank you for your trust and confidence during these trying times.

What a difference a year makes

Last August, I made some pretty big predictions about what a majority Democratic General Assembly would look like, specifically what kinds of legislation we’d pass. Here is an annotated version of what I wrote last year. Here we go!

Come with me, to July 1, 2020, in a world where control of the General Assembly has flipped…

One of our first orders of business when we returned to Richmond for the 2020 Session was to pass common sense reforms related to gun purchases and ownership. Beginning July 1, every firearms transaction in the Commonwealth is subject to a background check available on a website operated by the Virginia State Police. Falls Church City and Fairfax County owned buildings are not only tobacco free, but local governments have voted to make them gun free zones as well. We passed 7 common sense gun violence prevention bills this year, requiring universal background checks for all gun sales (HB 2), reinstating one handgun purchase per month limit (HB 812), requiring proof of competency to obtain a concealed carry permit, requiring individuals to report stolen firearms (HB 9), creating extreme risk protective orders (HB 674), allowing local governments the authority to ban guns in public spaces (HB 421), limiting children’s access to firearms (HB 1083), and prohibiting gun possession for those subject to a protective order (HB 1004).

Voting in the upcoming 2020 election is expected to break records for voter participation, not just because it’s a presidential election year, but because Virginia residents are now automatically registered to vote when they go to re-register their cars, apply for government benefits, or have any other interaction with state government. For those who aren’t automatically registered on Election Day, they will be able to register on the spot, and voting will begin early for anyone who wishes to cast a ballot, no reason need be provided. We’ve made Election Day a state holiday in Virginia (HB 108). And we’ve passed legislation to allow for no-excuse absentee voting (HB 1), same day voter registration (HB 187), and automatic voter registration (HB 235). Localities will even be able to use ranked choice voting for local elections if they choose (HB 1103).

Virginia is now part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and is committed to reducing our emissions while funding renewable energy programs and promoting green jobs. Expect to see rooftop solar panels dotting the landscape as the General Assembly removed regulatory barriers and added financial incentives for residential and community solar installation. We repealed the provision preventing us from joining RGGI and passed a series of bills (like HB 912) aimed at increasing our use of solar and wind energy. The Virginia Clean Energy Act (HB 1526) made it through as well. A comprehensive environment and energy bill, it will not only eliminate harmful carbon emissions by 2050 through strategic investments in solar and wind energy, but also require utility companies to significantly increase investment in energy efficiency programs and low-income communities.

Many Virginians will begin to see a more money in their paychecks each week as we begin the first step in a gradual increase in the minimum wage, which is on its way to $15 an hour. Those struggling with crippling student loan debt have new options to consolidate and refinance their loans, and those who suspect they’ve been overpaying can complain to the Virginia Bureau of Financial Institutions which now has oversight authority. A major compromise bill to raise the minimum wage (HB 395) made it through both houses, providing for a gradual increase to $15 over the next few years. And my bill (HB 10) to require student loan servicers to register with the SCC and establish a Student Borrower’s Bill of Rights finally passed as well.

Simple possession of Marijuana is no longer a criminal offense, but it is illegal to discriminate in housing and employment based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Not only did we decriminalize marijuana (HB 972), but we also passed a series of anti-discrimination bills. HB 6 prohibits discriminatory housing practices based on income. HB 827 prohibits discrimination based on pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions and HB 1514 prohibits racial discrimination related to hair texture, type, and styles. Lastly, SB 868 is an omnibus anti-discrimination bill, which explicitly creates causes of action for unlawful discrimination in public accommodations and employment in the Virginia Human Rights Act.

Virginia passed the Equal Rights Amendment, becoming the last state needed to add it to the US Constitution. HJ 1 was the first big piece of legislation that we passed this session.

We firmly established that the government has no business interfering in women’s healthcare and reproductive rights. HB 980 repeals the medically unnecessary ultrasound requirement and 24-hour mandated delay, effectively removing political interference between a woman and her medical provider and restores women's reproductive freedoms.

Well, look at that. In August 2019, that’s the column I hoped I’d get to write. I also did an Inside Scoop interview in December 2019, where I outlined these priorities. And here we are in March 2020. So, how’d we do?

2020 Crossover

We’re in the last three weeks stretch of this year’s 2020 General Assembly Session. Last week was the official halfway point known as Crossover - the term used to describe the last day before all bills in the House of Delegates are sent over to the Senate and vice versa.

It also means that we had a few very long days of debate on the House floor to finish up the remaining bills on the calendar. On Crossover day, we had 162 bills to vote on - we had already passed 668 bills that are now going through the Senate committee process.

We’re now sorting through over 550 new pieces of Senate legislation and will do the first round of debate on the 2020-2022 State Budget.

Unlike in previous years where I had few subcommittee assignments, I am now on six subcommittees, three of which I am the chairman (Housing/Consumer Protection Subcommittee, Constitutional Amendments Subcommittee, and the Subcommittee on Redistricting). In all the committees, we’re reviewing and moving legislation along with the goal of making sure we end session on time on March 7th.

Going Forward

I'm proud of my 14(!) bills that are headed to the Senate this week as well as the many others that I've had an opportunity to work on with my colleagues. You can view my complete legislative agenda here by going to lis.virginia.gov, selecting General Assembly Members, and then selecting my name.

Overall, we've passed a lot of substantive, progressive legislation in the House so far - raising the minimum wage (HB 395), repealing Virginia's mandatory ultrasound law (HB 980), allowing collective bargaining for public employees (HB 582), establishing the Virginia Values Act (HB 1663), ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (HJ 1), enacting the Governor's 8 gun violence prevention bills, raising the grand larceny threshold (HB 995), allowing no-excuse absentee voting (HB 1), creating the Solar Freedom Act (HB 572), same day voter registration (HB 201) - just to highlight a few!

The 2020-2022 State Budget

Over the weekend, the House Appropriations Committee released the 2020-2022 State Budget, which includes a series of additional, committee-approved budget amendments. As I mentioned earlier, we’ll do the first round of debate on the budget this week before the budget goes to conference – this means that a few House and Senate members will be selected to reconcile the differences between the two versions of the budget.

I’m happy to report that we already have some really good things in the budget that are earmarked to promote things like environmental responsibility, improve our education system, and make our communities safer.

More specifically, the budget includes funding to cover the expected costs of finally raising the minimum wage in Virginia. We’re sorely lagging behind our neighbors in Maryland, DC, and West Virginia who have already raised their wages.

We’re giving pay raises to state employees and teachers, who will get a 4% total raise.

There is $1.2 million for the Attorney General’s Division of Human Rights to support implementation and defense of recently passed human rights legislation. This refers to the Virginia Values Act and several other bills which prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Early childhood education and k-12 will get $1.4 billion in new spending. There is also $11.2 million for Tuition Assistance Grants (TAG), increasing the award to $3,850.

On the healthcare front, we are finally putting money toward establishing a Virginia Health Benefit Exchange. In addition, we have earmarked $1.7 million to expand opioid treatment services and added 1,135 new DD Waiver slots.

To adequately administer the gun violence prevention legislation that has passed, the Department of Corrections will receive an additional $2.6 million.

In response to high eviction rates, there is $6.6 million for eviction diversion and prevention programs.

We’re keeping our commitment to protecting the environment by earmarking $30 million for the Department of Environmental Quality for additional staff and programs related to environmental justice initiatives. We have also removed the prohibition on joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) will receive $6.6 million, increasing benefits by 5%. There is also $2.4 million to establish the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Prevention Fund at the Department of Social Services.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of all the good things in the budget, but it certainly is a snapshot of the priorities of the new majority in the House of Delegates. You can view the complete list of budget amendments at budget.lis.virginia.gov.

Be careful what you wish for

“Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.”  – Aesop’s Fables

In 2014 when I arrived in Richmond for my first session, I was assigned to two committees: Militia, Police and Public Safety, and the Committee on Science and Technology. Militia heard (and then killed) all the gun bills introduced in the House. Science and Technology had a nice name, but heard fewer than five bills a session (of the 1500 or so introduced in each house).

By crossover of that session, all but one of my bills had died, and because my committees rarely met, I often spent my afternoons on long runs around Richmond with my colleague Rob Krupicka from Alexandria.  We’d sometimes chat about all the great things we could accomplish if we were ever in charge again.

Starting out with so little, there wasn’t much the GOP Majority could take away to punish me, so I gradually became the member who did things no one else wanted to do. I learned to draft floor amendments to other members’ bills to force politically uncomfortable floor votes. I was called upon often to speak against bad bills even though the numbers meant their passage was inevitable.

All of which forced me, by trial and error, to learn and master the rules of procedure.  

By the time May of 2017 rolled around the idea of my ever wielding power or influence in the House of Delegates was a joke, literally. At a fundraiser for the Virginia Public Access Project, retiring Speaker William J. Howell joked he was bequeathing me a “real committee” in his legislative last will and testament.

Two elections and two and half years later, things are a lot different.

On our first day of the 2020 General Assembly Session, we unanimously elected our first female Speaker of the House, Eileen Filler-Corn, and our first female Clerk of the House, Suzette Denslow. Our Caucus is now led by Delegate Charniele Herring of Alexandra, the first African American majority leader in the 400 year history of the House of Delegates. 

I was appointed to serve on four committees, five subcommittees, and as chair of two subcommittees.
I was reappointed to the Courts of Justice Committee, added to the General Laws Committee where I will Chair the Housing & Consumer Protection Subcommittee and serve on the Professions & Occupations Subcommittee, added to the Privileges & Elections Committee, where I will serve as Vice Chair of the full committee and Chair of the Constitutional Amendments Subcommittee, and the Rules Committee where I was appointed to serve on our Joint Rules Committee.

If that sounds like a lot, it is.  It means my morning typically start at 7:00 a.m. and I am frequently here in my legislative office working until well after 10:00 p.m.

It turns out all that parliamentary procedure I learned comes in handy in the Majority as well. I serve as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus which now includes the functions of the caucus Parliamentarian. I frequently have been called upon on the floor during our first debates on the adoption of new rules for the House of Delegates, rules with feminine pronouns to refer to the Speaker, Clerk and all members of the House of Delegates. I also helped draft and present a policy at the Joint Rules Committee that finally bans gun from the Capitol and legislative buildings.

I chaired my first committee meeting Tuesday, January 4^th 2019 as the Privileges and Elections Committee took up and passed House Joint Resolution 1, ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Oh, and I introduced 31 bills! Bills that require student loan servicing companies to get a license to operate in Virginia, that protect transgender students from bullying and mistreatment, that allow for same day voter registration, prohibit the 3D printing of guns, make it illegal to convert campaign funds to personal use, allow localities to establish public financing of campaigns, and promote the establishment of distributed and renewable energy. Just to name a few.

What all this means is that I’ll be busier than I’ve ever been this session. Any afternoon running will be purely around Capitol Square, going from committee to committee. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

So be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.

Getting the words right

I know I can’t be the only one who finds myself shouting back at the radio or television these days. Usually it’s at the news, so I was a little surprised to find myself shouting at the radio this weekend, since I was listening to an all sports station.

In my car on the way back from Richmond, I heard someone describing what happened at the beginning of the Dallas Cowboys football game. Apparently, quarterback Dak Prescott, after winning the coin toss, simply said, “we’ll kick.” In this age of analytics, every team has figured out your statistically more likely to win if you start the second half on offense, so Prescott told the referee- “we’ll kick,” thinking his team would kick off in the first half, and receive the kick and start the game on offense in the second half.

The problem is, that’s not what the rules say. The rule is actually that each team gets to take a turn deciding whether to start on offense or defense. The winner of the coin toss gets to decide first, but they are also allowed to defer that decision and decide whether to start on offense or defense during the second half. According the referee, he heard “we’ll kick” to mean the Cowboys electing to start on Defense in the first half, which meant the Rams would still be able to decide whether to start on offense or defense in the second half. What Prescott should have said, was “we defer the decision to the 2nd half, our opponent can make the election for the 1st half.”

So, what was I yelling at the radio?

“He should have talked to his Parliamentarian!”

I couldn’t help thinking it was such a great example of the importance of understanding the rules and picking your words with precision to make sure the rules worked to your advantage.

As it turns out, the referee had a little trouble hearing (I know we often accuse the refs of having problems with their vision). After a video review of the conversation at the coin toss, it was determined that Prescott did in fact use the magic words “we defer to the second half” followed by “we’ll kick” so thanks to instant replay the Cowboys got the ball at the start of the 3rd quarter and went on to win the game.

In the Virginia House of Delegates, we have a lot of arcane procedural rules, and as a member of the minority caucus, I took great pride in listening closely and looking for opportunities to take advantage when the other side used words in a way that might allow us to gain an advantage, the equivalent of making the other team kickoff to start both halves of the game on defense.

Now that we are in the majority, it’s incumbent on us to make sure we choose our words carefully. With 55 votes to the other side’s 45, we should be able to win every vote, but that only helps if we know what we’re voting to do - and I know the other side will be listening carefully, and we don’t yet have instant replay on the floor of the House of Delegates.

Now that my party is in the majority, we have an awesome responsibility to govern, and to legislate knowing that the bills we propose in January are likely to become laws this July. We owe it to our constituents and all Virginians to choose our words carefully and make sure the words we use effect the policies and produce the outcomes we actually intend.

That’s why I’ve only pre-filed one bill so far, a bill that I’ve introduced and word-smithed for the last 3 years. It requires student loan servicing companies to be licensed to do business in Virginia and adhere to a student borrower’s bill of rights - a list of consumer protection standards - in order to retain that license. They’ll be subject to regulation and oversight by Virginia regulators, so borrowers don’t have to make a literal federal case of it every time their servicer does something wrong.

We will make big strides forward this year on gun violence prevention, moving toward a living wage, providing more funding for education, and increasing the use and affordability of renewable energy. We’ll increase women’s bodily autonomy in Virginia, and reform a criminal justice system that too often treats people of color more harshly than others. Some things just can’t wait.

Getting the words right and choosing them carefully also means that we may not get to all our priorities immediately. So be patient with us. There are more great things to come.

Virginia's Blue Wave

The Blue Wave. A Blue Tsunami. These are the metaphors we’ve heard bandied about to describe the remarkable transformation of Virginia’s electoral landscape since 2017. If we are going to stick with water analogies, perhaps it’s more apt to describe what’s happened in the Commonwealth as political sea change.

Waves, even Tsunamis, are sudden, singular events that crash and transform the landscape, but then quickly recede. Climate change, actual or political, is more incremental and more permanent - occasionally reaching certain tipping points where changes become more sudden and undeniable.

It’s tempting to look back only as far as the surprise election of Donald Trump as president in 2016 as the beginning of this change, but the truth is, it started long before that.

I was first elected to the General Assembly in 2013, sharing a ballot with Terry McAuliffe, Ralph Northam, and Mark Herring. Coming one year after Tim Kaine’s 2012 election to the U.S. Senate, the 2013 election marked the first time in decades that Democrats held all 5 statewide elected offices. This was despite the glitch-plagued rollout of the Healthcare.gov website.

In 2015, an off-off year election, in spite of very low turnout (only 29% of registered voters), the Virginia House of Delegates picked up a seat in a cycle where we’d become accustomed to losing ground to the GOP. In 2016, Hillary Clinton easily won Virginia’s 13 electoral votes.

So, in 2017, when even the most optimistic of us thought we might pick up 7 or 8 seats and we picked up 15, it certainly did look like a wave. Or even a tsunami, triggered by the earthquake that was Donald Trump’s election.

Virginia has been getting bluer and bluer, though. We’ve known since the 2008 Presidential election that there are enough Democratic voters across the Commonwealth to give us control of the General Assembly. As the state has grown, it has grown more diverse, and become less rural, with its growth mostly in suburban communities.

The election of Donald Trump, in spite of his losing Virginia, was the event that grabbed the attention of those voters that weren’t attuned to politics except for once every four years. It showed them that there really is a difference between the two political parties, and how much their participation in the process matters.

In 2017, we had nearly 48% turnout for a Governor’s race with 100 House of Delegates races on the ballot at the same time. Had this been a wave, that crashed and receded, we might have contented ourselves with near parity in the General Assembly that enabled us to expand health care to nearly 400,000 Virginians.

But that was just the beginning. Voters are now awakened to what they can accomplish when they vote. And the fact that control of the House was decided by a random drawing of a name from a bowl just drove home the point that every vote counts.

Last night we saw the blue tide continue to rise, reaching a new tipping point. Democrats took a 2-seat majority in the State Senate, and a healthy 10-seat advantage in the House of Delegates (55-45 pending the outcome of two very close races). With Democrats now in control of both houses of the legislature and the Governor’s mansion, Virginia will finally have state government policies that reflect the new reality of who we are as a Commonwealth.

Gun Violence prevention legislation will be enacted into law, rather than being dismissed after 90 minutes of political theater.

Virginia will continue to be the best state in which to do business, but without being the worst place to be a worker, as we work to provide everyone with a living wage and affordable healthcare, and to remove impediments to workers’ ability to organize their workplaces where and when they so choose.

Women won’t be subject to medically-unnecessary medical procedures and have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to access healthcare services, asserting their right to control their own bodies without government interference.

Virginia will contribute to slowing (non-political) climate change, by moving swiftly towards becoming carbon-free and transitioning to clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, creating new job opportunities in these innovative industries.

Bottom line - we finally have an opportunity to enact substantive, progressive policies, because Virginians yesterday voted in a legislature that finally looks like and shares the values of the Commonwealth it represents.

It won’t all happen overnight, but yesterday’s election results are both the start and the continuation of something very big, very impactful, and in the case of this particular political climate change, something very good for all Virginians.

Ain't Baseball Great?

Ain’t baseball great?

I’ve had the privilege to attend one game from each round of the National League Playoffs, including the Wild Card Round. It’s been so good for my soul to spend three hours surrounded by like-minded folks all pulling for the same thing (with the exception of the stray Brewer or Dodger or Cardinal fan here and there) at the same time, in the same place.

Everyone wearing their lucky outfit, the one that they haven’t washed since Juan Soto broke the game open in the bottom of the 8th against Milwaukee. Some of us imagine that our superstitious rituals have a real influence on the outcome of the game. We cheer and wave our towels together. We stand as one when the pitch count reaches two strikes. We pat each other on the back when the other team gets the better of us that night.

Rarely do we ask each other “Where were you born?” “What language do you speak at home?” “Is that your friend you brought to the ball park with you, or your ‘friend’?” “Who are you voting for?”

We are all there for the same reasons. To enjoy America’s favorite pastime and perhaps get a break from the daily grind. This is probably why I also like the Nationals current popular HashTag or team motto, “Stay in the fight,” so much.

It’s relevant to this year’s team that started the season playing poorly and enduring bad breaks. Yet they never did quit or stop believing in themselves and each other. They stuck with what they knew was right and trusted that the results would follow. Stay In The Fight describes the team well.

I also really like the hashtag/motto from years ago. One pursuit. That’s a motto that I think still applies to those of us that fill the stands each night, clad in red jerseys featuring our favorite player’s name and number. WE are all there pulling for the same thing, all of us in our own way. I think by now you might see where I am going with this.

Besides having World Series Playoff fever, I think my Nationals fandom may hold some hints for how to cure what ails us as a nation. We need to recognize that all of us really are rooting for the same things. We all want to live in a Country, a Commonwealth and a Community where we can feel safe and welcome, where we have opportunities to prosper, and build a world where our children can be better off and have an easier time than we did.

Of course, the best way to achieve that is subject of some debate. You can debate whether Davey should have brought in a left-handed relief pitcher or not. Fervent fans can have heated disagreements about that. The beautiful thing about baseball is that everyone is judged on their results.

Some of us believe the best path to prosperity is to create an economy where no one is left behind, and no one is excluded because of who they are, where they came from, how they got here, or who they love. We can all have a bigger slice of pie if we all throw in some more ingredients - or some of us can have a whole pie by taking it home and eating it ourselves.

(Wait, that’s a food analogy, not baseball. I must be hungry!)

This is my last column before the November 5th election. I’ve written previously about what’s at stake and what policies are likely to be enacted if my “team” wins control of the legislature. I’ve also seen the letters to the editor decrying the policies I’ve called for, suggesting they’ll be destructive and impede us in our pursuit of that shared vision of prosperity and opportunity and safety for all.

I hope that once the outcome is known, we’ll remember that we are all on the same team. We all want the same thing for ourselves and our loved ones, and we will root for whomever wins to be successful.

My hope for 2020 is that when I leave the baseball game and tune the radio form the sports station to the news, all my positive feelings that come from being amongst a community working together, playing together, even many of us praying together in our own ways - that all those positive feelings don’t evaporate when I hear the latest quotes from our national leaders.

So, let’s root for the home team and for a post-election season that moves us forward. Let’s play ball!