New laws on July 1st

As a general rule, the new laws the General Assembly passes during its regular session in January and February take effect on July 1st every year. Some of the big changes we made this year, including increasing the minimum wage, may have delayed effective dates, while others, like all of our gun violence prevention statutes will take effect in just a couple of weeks.

So many big, exciting, historic things made headlines this session, that you could be forgiven for forgetting that we did some things that, in any other year, would have been THE big story out of Richmond.

For instance, you probably knew that Virginia decriminalized simple possession of marijuana, so that it’s now a civil offense punishable by a fine, but did you know that we also legalized sport betting in Virginia? The Virginia State Lottery will be in charge of granting licenses, setting up strong consumer protections (that’s why my bill was incorporated into the new law) and we established a Gambling Treatment and Support Fund.​

You probably heard that we granted localities the right to regulate firearms in the buildings and parks they own. You may even have heard recently that localities will have the right to move, remove or contextualize confederate monuments! You may not have heard about some of the other new powers we granted localities, and counties in particular.

Reducing reliance on real property taxes in places like Fairfax County in particular has long been one of my priorities. Now local governments can impose their own cigarette tax and create a plastic bag tax. They can also adopt their own affordable housing ordinances with certain provisions.

Localities now have the authority to enact their own human rights ordinances or non-discrimination policies in housing, employment, public accommodations, credit, and education on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. We also updated the Hate Crimes Statute to include gender, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation to the categories of victims covered. This means that a higher criminal penalty can be sought for the offence and that the crime will be reported to the central information database.

You may have heard about the Clean Economy Act which seeks to transform the grid in Virginia and eventually wean us off of fossil fuels all together, but you probably didn’t know we made it easier for electric vehicle owners to install a charging station in front of their home or within the boundary of their community association’s parking area. For those looking to live greener lives, we’ve also made it easier to obtain residential solar panels with the Solar Freedom Act.

Many folks lauded us for ending the practice of suspending driver’s licenses for people too poor to pay their court fines or fees, but did you know that we also made it easier to report an overdose without having to worry about being arrested? Our Good Samaritan Law passed after being introduced for years without success.

In a year that seems to be a nonstop series of unprecedented bad news headlines, you’d be forgiven if you hadn’t heard that the General Assembly finally capped interest rates and fees on loans from predatory lenders. The loan companies will also have to make more reasonable attempts to verify a borrower’s income.

Student loan borrowers will also have protections at the state level, including a new Borrower’s Bill of Rights that requires student loan servicing companies to be licensed by the Bureau of Financial Institutions and promise not to lie to borrowers about their repayment options. If the Federal Department of Education won’t reign these companies in, we now can in Virginia.

In fact, we did a lot of things in Virginia that the feds just aren’t doing anymore. Some, they are now finally picking up on. In Virginia we passed a bill to prohibit health insurance companies from charging more than $50 a month for copays. Medicare and Medicaid just announced a similar deal with the pharmaceutical companies. It’s almost like they saw the writing on the wall.

Virginia is finally a leader on many important issues. I look forward to setting an example for the rest of the Country on justice and police reform at our upcoming special session this summer.

If you’ve got a legislative idea for next year, I’m all ears!

The Deep State is real

The Deep State is real.

Well, sort of.

To the extent you’ve been told there is a vast network of semi-anonymous appointed business leaders and career government bureaucrats who work together with a chosen few elected officials to make the really important policy decisions while almost no one is looking . . . well, here in Virginia, we call those Boards, Authorities, Councils, Commissions, Studies, and sometimes Study Commissions, or Select Committees, or some combination of all of the above.

Ok, it’s really not as nefarious as I make it sound. The meetings are all open to the public and subject to Virginia’s Freedom of Information laws and they provide a great forum of public and stakeholder input that we rarely have time for during our regular legislative sessions in January and February.

In fact, people ask me all the time how the General Assembly can really make the important policy decisions it needs to make during our very short legislative sessions – 60 day “long” sessions and 45 day “short” ones.

The short answer: We don’t.

The long answer: A lot of the heavy lifting is done in the off season with the help of these groups made up of subject matter experts, interested and affected parties, legislators, lawyers and advocates. Although these groups don’t have the power to change the law without General Assembly action, when their legislative recommendations are introduced, they carry a lot of weight and given the volume of work we have to do - rarely second guessed too much.

That’s why many times when people get down to Richmond to advocate during session, it feels like they are already too late. For the six years I served in the minority party in the House of Delegates, I often felt the same way. Legislators would appear before committees and their entire bill presentation would be “this is a recommendation of the Boyd-Graves Conference” and that would be that.

We made a lot of important progress during this year’s General Assembly session, but there is much more work to do. For the first time in 24 years, we’ve had both chambers and the Governor’s mansion under Democratic Control. Some of the bills dealing with stickier issues this year were referred to commissions for further study and refinement.

In the past, when a progressive policy agenda item was referred to a commission or “carried over” that was a relatively gentle way of killing the bill.

As our new Democratic majorities settle in for the long haul, though, the Speaker of the House has the opportunity to appoint new members to dozens of commissions, boards and councils. This creates opportunities for members who may have been sidelined previously to participate in the legislative process in new and more meaningful ways.

I was thrilled last week to learn that I’d been appointed by the Speaker to serve on the Board of Veterans Affairs, the Freedom of Information Advisory Council (FOIA), the Code Commission, and the Housing Commission.

The Board of Veterans Affairs works on policies related to veterans’ welfare and services available in the Commonwealth. It meets periodically throughout the year and works closely with the Veterans Affairs Caucus, of which I am also a member.

Transparency is the main purview of the FOIA Council. With some exceptions, the presumption is that documents from public officials and meetings of state and local public entities should be made available for review. It’s the exceptions that often cause the most issues. This is when the FOIA Council can step in to resolve disputes through advisory opinions, offering guidelines for interpreting Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act.

Established as a permanent commission 1946, the Code Commission is one of the oldest commissions around. It’s tasked with supervising the codification of statutes after each legislative session, revising Code titles, identifying obsolete sections, and reconciling the administrative regulations of state agencies into the Virginia Administrative Code. The Commission meets once a month.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Housing Commission is tasked with ensuring the availability of affordable housing in Virginia. Through permanent work groups, the Commission makes recommendations and oversees studies related to housing, real property, and community development. The full Commission meets three times per year and the work groups meeting more often as needed.

The legislative session we just finished was historic by any measure, and there is even more to come. I’m excited to be a part of the conversation.

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.