General Assembly Report

This year’s General Assembly Session ended one day late. Budget negotiators worked to reach a compromise on the budget resolving the differences between the Senate and the House. For FY 2012, $75.6 million in funds from the General Fund (GF) were added for K-12 education by reaching a compromise between the Senate’s proposal of $100.6 million and the House’s reduction by $0.7 million. Additional funding of  $68.8 million was included for Medicaid provider restorations and $30 million was appropriated to the Behavioral and Developmental Services Trust Fund in response to concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice. The purpose of the fund is to transition individuals from state training centers into the community. In the area of Public Safety, state aid was partially restored to localities with police departments.

With regard to the proposed reinstatement of the 5% employee Virginia Retirement System (VRS) contribution, a compromise was reached to require Virginia state employees to pay 5% into their retirement accounts and receive a 5% raise to offset the contribution. Employees hired after July 1, 2010 will continue to pay the required 5% retirement contribution as outlined under the 2010 pension reform but will not receive the 5% raise. Retirement contributions for teachers were not changed at the state level.

The Route 1 Transportation Study bill that I introduced passed and is to be funded at around $1.5 million. This first critical phase will look at the scope of what the whole study should include to improve the Route 1 corridor.

“Ashley’s Law” that I introduced in the Senate passed. It amends the Code of Virginia relating to emergency vehicles proceeding through intersections. I introduced the bill after one of my constituents, Ashley McIntosh, was killed when a police officer ran a red light without a siren at a high speed on Route 1 during icy, winter conditions. This requires that emergency vehicle operators have both their sirens and flashing lights on or be able to stop when proceeding through a red light.

Another successful bill extended the life of the Joint Commission on Health Care until 2015. The House tried to reduce the life of the Commission to 2013.

I also put forward a bill to require that the party against whom a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition is brought be provided a copy of the petition prior to the filing of the petition. This bill was offered in response to the filing of petitions against Prince William County Schools who were not notified of the petition and had to rush to respond to the suits.

SB 1339 amends Virginia’s Code regarding population projections for comprehensive planning in urban development areas. These projections may now be based either on the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service of the University of Virginia or the Council of Government (COG) estimates. I carried this bill at the request of Prince William County.

Other bills that I introduced included: the allowance of purchasing direct recording electronic voting machines from any source to meet legal mandates for accessible voting equipment; the designation of October 2011 and the years thereafter as “Family History Month”; the issuance of a license plate celebrating the 100th anniversary of Fort Belvoir; and the enactment into law of the constitutional amendment adopted by voters in November 2010 providing a property tax exemption for veterans who have a 100 percent, service-related disability or their surviving spouses. This includes both the principal residence and the land on which it is situated. Effective date is January 1, 2011.

As a result of my initiative on SJ 294, the Joint Commission on Health Care will study the growing health issue of eating disorders.           

We were able to prevent the privatization of the Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) stores that the Governor proposed this year. The ABC bill came before the Senate Committee I chair. I refused to bring the bill up for consideration as I had told the Governor’s staff that I would not bring up the bill unless the House of Delegates acted on it first. The Republican Chair in the House also refused to consider the bill.

ABC has worked well for Virginians for nearly 80 years. The system makes a wide variety of products available in clean, reasonably located and safe stores statewide. The operation is transparent and free of the corruption that has plagued other states. And ABC has been profitable.  In good times and bad, ABC generates badly needed revenue for critical state services, including public education, law enforcement and mental health. I was against this initiative from the beginning. The Virginia ABC system seems to work, is not broken and doesn’t need fixing. There was also a fear that the number of stores would be increased from 333 to 1000, liquor costs would rise and funds to the government would decrease. The Governor says he will bring this issue back up next year.

For the rest of March, we will be working on re-districting and will go back to Richmond in April to develop the redistricting plan.

This short session of the General Assembly was an extremely busy one. Fortunately, with better than expected collection of state receipts, we were able to protect some of the areas of government that are so critical to the well being of Virginians.