Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he’s optimistic about the remainder of his agenda for the General Assembly’s 2022 session. “This legislative process is one that I find incredibly encouraging,” he said. ”I’m inspired by it.” Democrats in the Senate said they welcomed his sunny outlook, but said his bills are “going to get voted down over here.”—Associated Press

• Youngkin’s administration turned its attention from masks to taxes at a series of campaign-style appearances Thursday.—Washington Post

• Youngkin’s push for lab schools echoes a similar effort pursued by former Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose 2012 push never got off the ground.—VPM

• Attorney General Jason Miyares returned four campaign donations totaling $70,000 he reported depositing Monday in violation of a state ban on accepting contributions during the legislative session. Miyares’ spokeswoman said the donations were received prior to the cutoff but deposited late in error.—Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Virginia House of Delegates approved a bill ending school mask mandates Monday on a party-line vote, fast-tracking the proposed law to Gov. Glenn Youngkin just five days after it was passed by the state Senate.

Youngkin is expected to recommend an emergency clause that could cause the legislation to take effect immediately rather than July 1, the default effective date for new laws approved by the General Assembly. Youngkin, who briefly walked onto the House floor Monday to mark the legislation’s passage, confirmed he plans to send a bill revised with an emergency clause to the House as early as tomorrow. That means the legislature could be taking its final votes on the matter later this week.

“It’s time we end the insanity and let our kids be kids again,” House Speaker Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, said in a news release. “Virginia is behind the curve for states ending masking mandates and I’m proud of the legislature for getting this done quickly.”

To emphasize the speediness of the effort, House Republicans immediately took the bill to Youngkin’s office at the Capitol to deliver it to the governor in person.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is asking a circuit court for one of the state’s most populous counties to allow him to join in a lawsuit filed by a group of parents who oppose their local school board’s mask mandate.

It’s the latest effort by the recently inaugurated Republican governor to roll back school Covid-prevention measures championed by state Democrats, including Youngkin’s predecessor, Ralph Northam.

Youngkin, Attorney General Jason Miyares and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow are also seeking a temporary injunction and a temporary restraining order against the Loudoun County School Board, court documents filed on Wednesday show.

Upon taking office last month, Youngkin, who campaigned heavily on what he characterized as restoring parents’ influence in public education, issued an executive order that allowed parents and guardians to “elect for their children not to be subject to any mask mandate in effect at the child’s school or educational program.” Northam had previously issued a public health emergency order mandating masks in schools.

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has used his first two weeks in office to push Virginia firmly to the right, attempting a dramatic political shift in a state once considered reliably Democratic that’s being closely watched by others in the GOP.

In his opening days, the new governor issued executive orders methodically checking off his top campaign promises. The orders undermined classroom mask mandates, aimed to restrict how students are taught about racism, approved an investigation into a wealthy suburban Washington school district that’s become a national symbol for battles over so-called parents’ rights, and attempted to scrap Virginia’s participation in a carbon-limiting initiative meant to combat climate change.

Youngkin has also expanded the duties of a state diversity officer created by his Democratic predecessor to include being an “ambassador for unborn children” as Virginia dropped its opposition before the Supreme Court to a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Virginia Mercury editors Ned Oliver Sarah Vogelsong Graham Moomaw|Kate Masters have done the best publicly available summary of what’s the Democrats have accomplished with control over Virginia’s three branches. Below are the first paragraphs of their coverage on key issues.

Elections and voting

Making it easier to vote was a top priority when Democrats took control, and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the pace of change to Virginia’s once-strict election laws.

Climate change

Before Democrats regained power, the state had passed no significant laws aimed at addressing climate change. In short order, policies began bubbling up just as surely as tidal floods in a Hampton Roads storm sewer.

Education

When Democrats took control of the General Assembly, they pledged to increase funding for education — touting it as a priority for the 2020 session.

Health

Virginia expanded Medicaid before Democrats took control of the General Assembly, allowing hundreds of thousands of previously ineligible Virginians to gain coverage. But in the two years since, they’ve made significant changes to the state health care exchange in an effort to stabilize enrollment and lower the prices on premiums..

Minimum wage

Democrats voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $12 an hour over the next three years — the first increase the state has seen since 2009, when the federal minimum went up to $7.25 an hour.

Guns

Before winning their majorities, Democrats made it clear they wanted to pass tighter laws to prevent potentially dangerous people from having access to guns and allow firearm bans in more public places. They mostly delivered on that front, but they’ve stopped short of outlawing specific types of weaponry.

Criminal justice

From abolishing the death penalty to legalizing marijuana, Democrats enacted sweeping reforms touching all aspects of the state’s criminal justice system.

Civil rights

The party has taken both concrete and symbolic steps on matters of freedom and equality. After his yearbook blackface scandal, Northam led an effort to repeal nearly 100 outdated, discriminatory laws still on the books. This year Democrats extended that symbolic step to LGBTQ rights, voting to repeal a ban on gay marriage still in the state Constitution, which was invalidated by a 2015 Supreme Court ruling.

Utility reform 

Democrats have remained deeply divided on electric utility reform over the past two years, with many House members joining with a cadre of Republicans in that chamber to push for a set of changes to state code that would restore much of the authority of Virginia’s public utility regulators, the State Corporation Commission, to regulate rates and earnings. Powerful members of the Senate however, with longstanding ties to the utilities, and particularly Dominion Energy, have been reluctant to relinquish legislative control, even amid regular reports of excessive profits by the monopolies.

Campaign finance

In his 2007 autobiography, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a prolific Democratic fundraiser, said his father taught him “money in politics was neither evil nor good.”

Taxes

Though the Democratic majorities have rewritten swathes of state policy to make Virginia more culturally progressive, they’ve shown less appetite for addressing economic disparities by changing the tax code.

Yes, Virginia, we have a budget!

This year I was thrilled to be appointed again by the Speaker as a conferee to work out differences between the House and Senate budgets. This evening, we adopted the final report. I believe it is a budget Virginians can be proud of.

While individual bills often get the most attention, the budget is arguably the most important reflection of our values. This year’s budget process has been a roller coaster ride. After adopting an initial budget in March 2020, we had to cut $2.8 billion as a result of a COVID-driven revenue shortfall. Going into session, we anticipated a revenue rebound of $1.2 billion. Finally, a mid-session re-forecast provided an additional $730 million. That rebound was great news – but it still means we have about a billion dollars less in revenue from just a year ago.

Here are just a few of the budget highlights:

• Income Tax Relief – $221M revenue reduction in order to fund income tax relief to individuals and businesses related to conformity with the federal CARES Act.
• State Employee Pay Raises – 5% pay raise for state employees beginning July 1, 2021.
• Virginia Retirement System – $100M deposit to the VRS to reduce unfunded liabilities. This is a key investment that will help to stabilize the system for the long-term.
• PreK-12 Education – $443M to hold public school funding steady from the original 2020 appropriation; $40M for schools to address COVID-related learning loss; and, $76M to support increases in school counselors, social workers, psychologists, and behavioral analysts.
• Teacher Pay Raises – State share of 5% pay raises for teachers. The Governor originally proposed a 2% bonus.
• Preschool – $11.1M for increased investment in the Virginia Preschool Initiative.
• Northern Virginia Cost-to-Compete – $14.6M more in supplemental funding to Northern Virginia in recognition of the higher cost of living for our region.
• Higher Education – $149M to our institutions of higher learning to maintain affordable access through tuition stabilization and need-based financial assistance.
• Human Resources – $173M in new spending for human resources, with a focus on long-term care, maternal and child health, and behavioral and developmental services. This includes $14.2M to add 435 Developmental Disability waiver slots in FY22, bringing the total for FY22 to 985 slots.
• Vaccinations – $89M for mass vaccination efforts to maximize new federal dollars.
• Water Quality – An additional $155M to meet our Chesapeake Bay restoration targets, including investments in wastewater treatment, stormwater management, and agricultural best management practices.
• Broadband – Additional funding of $99M for broadband deployment in unserved areas.
• Virginia Employment Commission – $10M to increase customer service levels and $5M to finish modernizing VEC’s IT systems to enable more efficient service delivery.
• Voter Registration – $16.7M to replace and strengthen the state’s voter registration system.
• Transportation – $83.5M to improve commuter rail service on the VRE Manassas Line and $32.4M to support and stabilize Metro.
• Reserves – An additional $250M to the Revenue Reserve Fund. This brings combined balances in reserves to $2.16 billion, or about 9% of general fund revenues.

That last bullet deserves additional comment. Something we are proud of in Virginia is that we have maintained a AAA bond rating since 1938 – longer than any other state. This saves Virginia considerable amounts of money and reflects a commitment to keeping our budget structurally sound. While states are currently the beneficiaries of large amounts of federal assistance, it would be irresponsible to think that this will continue in perpetuity. Building up our reserves will ensure that Virginia can successfully transition once federal COVID-19 funding goes away.

Like most members, I introduced my own budget amendments and was pleased to see many of them incorporated into the final budget. These included funding for Northern Virginia Family Services, Brain Injury Services, Chesapeake Bay restoration, the Virginia International Trade Plan, Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension, and our regional planning district commissions.

You can find a more detailed overview of the budget here and a list of my amendments here.

In-Person Learning

Few issues have garnered more constituent communication than SB1303, which deals with bringing our children back into the classroom. This is a personal issue for my family as well, as our 12 year old attempts to navigate his first year of middle school. While he is continuing to learn, and his teachers have done an amazing job, the learning loss is definitely real.

When SB1303 came over from the Senate, it simply mandated in-person learning. What came out of the House, and was eventually passed by the Senate, takes us to full in-person learning, but has guardrails to ensure safety. This includes incorporating CDC and VDH guidelines to the maximum extent practical and the ability of a school board to move specific schools back to virtual learning based on transmission metrics. Importantly, the bill allows parents to choose a virtual approach for their students based on family situations. All teachers must be offered the vaccine prior to in-person learning (which is occurring now under Phase 1b) and the bill maintains the current process for teachers to work virtually through a reasonable ADA accommodation.

The bill passed with a strong bi-partisan vote of 88Y-9N in the House and 36Y-3N in the Senate. I voted aye.

Standards of Learning

The dreaded SOL tests! It is a topic of much consternation when I speak with parents, students, and teachers alike. The Code of Virginia simply establishes that there will be SOL assessments, the purpose of which is to ensure that educational progress can be compared across Virginia. That is a laudable goal. Unfortunately, many of these tests have turned into high-stakes end-of-the-year tests that can promote rote memorization over critical thinking and applying what has been learned to the real world.

This year we passed changes to the SOL assessments that I am genuinely excited about. HB2027 replaces end-of-the-year tests with a through-assessment model where students take a series of three lower stakes tests throughout the year. That way teachers have a better sense of where a student is starting out, can make mid-year adjustments, and then see how the student has progressed at the end of the year. While the bill applies only to SOL tests from grades three through eight, if it is successful, it could be applied to all levels.

Virginia is, famously, a state that prides itself on being business-friendly. That makes it all the more interesting that a number of bills favoring consumers have made it through the House. Democrats have led the charge, but several of the bills earned bipartisan support even in the face of utility opposition.

This doesn’t guarantee their luck will hold. Democrats aren’t just more numerous in the House, they are also younger and more independent-minded than the old guard Democrats in control of the Senate. The second half of the session is going to be a lot more challenging for pro-consumer legislation.

The action will be especially hot in the coming days around five bills dealing with utility reform and a customer’s “right to shop” for renewable energy (HB2048). All these bills passed the House with at least some Republican support. But they are headed to Senate Commerce and Labor, which, though dominated by Democrats, has a long history of protecting utilities.

But progressive priorities like reforming campaign finance appear dead for the year.

As Gov. Ralph Northam tacked on an extra two weeks to the Virginia legislative session, lawmakers reached Crossover Day on Friday. The deadline for a bill to be approved by at least one chamber offered a glimpse into broad changes Democrats hope to make in criminal justice, beginning with legalizing marijuana and abolishing the death penalty. It also showed the tension between moderates and progressives in the party on questions of resuming school and worker rights.

Criminal justice reform advocates said lawmakers were effecting a sea change that extended beyond marijuana and capital punishment to include sentencing, probation and parole. Republicans, in the minority of both chambers of the General Assembly, say the sweeping approach would result in Virginia becoming too easy on criminals.

Political commentator Bob Holsworth recalled that Democrats once supported Republican Gov. George Allen’s push in the 1990s to crack down on crime, including eliminating parole. Now the party, in its second year in power in the state legislature, is driving the change.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he’s optimistic about the remainder of his agenda for the General Assembly’s 2022 session. “This legislative process is one that I find incredibly encouraging,” he said. ”I’m inspired by it.” Democrats in the Senate said they welcomed his sunny outlook, but said his bills are “going to get voted down over here.”—Associated Press

• Youngkin’s administration turned its attention from masks to taxes at a series of campaign-style appearances Thursday.—Washington Post

• Youngkin’s push for lab schools echoes a similar effort pursued by former Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose 2012 push never got off the ground.—VPM

• Attorney General Jason Miyares returned four campaign donations totaling $70,000 he reported depositing Monday in violation of a state ban on accepting contributions during the legislative session. Miyares’ spokeswoman said the donations were received prior to the cutoff but deposited late in error.—Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Virginia House of Delegates approved a bill ending school mask mandates Monday on a party-line vote, fast-tracking the proposed law to Gov. Glenn Youngkin just five days after it was passed by the state Senate.

Youngkin is expected to recommend an emergency clause that could cause the legislation to take effect immediately rather than July 1, the default effective date for new laws approved by the General Assembly. Youngkin, who briefly walked onto the House floor Monday to mark the legislation’s passage, confirmed he plans to send a bill revised with an emergency clause to the House as early as tomorrow. That means the legislature could be taking its final votes on the matter later this week.

“It’s time we end the insanity and let our kids be kids again,” House Speaker Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, said in a news release. “Virginia is behind the curve for states ending masking mandates and I’m proud of the legislature for getting this done quickly.”

To emphasize the speediness of the effort, House Republicans immediately took the bill to Youngkin’s office at the Capitol to deliver it to the governor in person.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is asking a circuit court for one of the state’s most populous counties to allow him to join in a lawsuit filed by a group of parents who oppose their local school board’s mask mandate.

It’s the latest effort by the recently inaugurated Republican governor to roll back school Covid-prevention measures championed by state Democrats, including Youngkin’s predecessor, Ralph Northam.

Youngkin, Attorney General Jason Miyares and Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow are also seeking a temporary injunction and a temporary restraining order against the Loudoun County School Board, court documents filed on Wednesday show.

Upon taking office last month, Youngkin, who campaigned heavily on what he characterized as restoring parents’ influence in public education, issued an executive order that allowed parents and guardians to “elect for their children not to be subject to any mask mandate in effect at the child’s school or educational program.” Northam had previously issued a public health emergency order mandating masks in schools.

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has used his first two weeks in office to push Virginia firmly to the right, attempting a dramatic political shift in a state once considered reliably Democratic that’s being closely watched by others in the GOP.

In his opening days, the new governor issued executive orders methodically checking off his top campaign promises. The orders undermined classroom mask mandates, aimed to restrict how students are taught about racism, approved an investigation into a wealthy suburban Washington school district that’s become a national symbol for battles over so-called parents’ rights, and attempted to scrap Virginia’s participation in a carbon-limiting initiative meant to combat climate change.

Youngkin has also expanded the duties of a state diversity officer created by his Democratic predecessor to include being an “ambassador for unborn children” as Virginia dropped its opposition before the Supreme Court to a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Two incumbent Democrats who trail Republican challengers in close races in Virginia’s House of Delegates announced Tuesday that they will seek recounts, leaving control of the chamber in limbo.

Republicans have won 50 seats and Democrats have won 48. Republicans hold razor-thin margins in the two remaining races that are headed to recounts, according to certified results from the Nov. 2 election, leaving open a remote possibility of a 50-50 split in the chamber.

The Associated Press hasn’t called the races. In District 91, Republican A.C. Cordoza leads Democratic Del. Martha Mugler by 94 votes out of 27,388 counted. In District 85, Republican Karen Greenhalgh leads Democratic Del. Alex Askew by 127 votes out of 28,413 counted. The margin in both races is under 0.5%, which allows losing candidates to request state-funded recounts.

“Voting is a privilege, and we must honor every person who came out and exercised one of our most fundamental rights by ensuring that each vote is properly accounted for,” Askew said in a news release.

Several days after the election, Mugler conceded the race to her Republican challenger, but later tempered that concession, saying that she had been made aware of an error that occurred while reporting vote counts in her district. On Tuesday, she said she decided to seek a recount “in order to exercise all possible due diligence.”

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia House Republicans on Sunday unanimously elected their leadership team for the upcoming legislative session, nominating Del. Todd Gilbert to serve as House speaker.

The vote came nearly two weeks after Republicans flipped the Democratic-held offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general in a red surge. Republicans also flipped at least five seats in the House of Delegates and appear poised to take control of the chamber.

Republicans now hold 50 seats in the 100-seat House. Two races remain uncalled, but Republicans hold narrow leads in vote totals in those districts. GOP leaders have said they’re confident they have won those seats, which would give them a 52-48 majority over Democrats.

In House Districts 85 and 91, Democrats are eligible for state-funded recounts because Republicans are leading by margins of less than 0.5%. The two Democratic incumbents in those districts — Martha Mugler in District 91 and Alex Askew in District 85 — have not said yet whether they will seek recounts.

Two close Virginia House of Delegates races appeared to be headed to recounts Monday, after tallies of mail-in and provisional ballots left the Republican challengers with slim leads.
As the results stood Monday, Republicans appeared to have picked up seven seats, giving their party a 52-to-48 majority in the House.

But Del. Martha M. Mugler (D-Hampton) and Del. Alex Askew (D-Virginia Beach) would not concede, with the margin in Mugler’s race against Republican A.C. Cordoza below the 0.5 percent mark that would trigger an automatic state-funded recount, and the divide in Askew’s race against Republican Karen Greenhalgh nearly at that point.

“This is not over yet,” said Zoë Kleinfeld, Askew’s campaign manager.

Mugler had conceded on Friday but undid that concession in a Facebook post on Sunday.

On Monday, House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) also walked back a congratulatory statement she had delivered to Republicans on Friday, with her office saying every vote should be counted in the two close races.
“We’re just sort of waiting it out, seeing what we see,” said Sigalle Reshef, a spokeswoman for Filler-Corn. “We’re going to let the system play out.”

When Virginia Democrats wrapped up the 2021 General Assembly session, there were at least two big pieces of unfinished business.

Because constitutional amendments need to pass two years in a row before being put to voters, Republicans’ big wins Tuesday raise new doubts about efforts to get rid of Virginia’s now-defunct ban on same-sex marriage and automatically restore voting rights to felons once they’ve completed their sentences.

Both proposals won initial passage this year with some Republican support. Whether they’ll pass a second time, which would put the questions on ballots for the 2022 election, now depends largely on how the new, 52-48 GOP majority in the House of Delegates chooses to handle them.

“The new and expanded caucus has yet to meet,” said Garren Shipley, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, who’s vying to become the next House speaker. “And members will need to discuss these amendments.”

The proposed amendment on voting would do away with a lifetime felon disenfranchisement policy enshrined in the state Constitution. Previously, people who wanted to regain their voting rights had to petition the governor. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe and current Gov. Ralph Northam have used their powers broadly to restore voting rights to hundreds of thousands of ex-offenders, characterizing the effort as a racial justice measure meant to restore ex-offenders’ standing as full citizens with an equal stake in democracy.

The amendment pending in the General Assembly gets rid of the governor’s role and makes the process automatic “upon release from incarceration.” The amendment passed the Democratic-controlled House this year on a 56-40 vote with support from two Republicans.

Democratic leaders in Virginia conceded Friday that Republicans have won control of the House of Delegates.

The Associated Press has not called all of Virginia’s House races yet. But the concession means Republicans would complete an elections sweep in which they also reclaimed the offices of governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general.

House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn issued a statement acknowledging the GOP majority shortly after Democratic Del. Martha Mugler conceded defeat in a tight race against Republican challenger A.C. Cordoza in the 91st House district, located in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region. With Mugler’s concession, Republicans now expect to hold at least 51 seats in the 100-member chamber.

“While the results of the election were not in our favor, our work for the people of Virginia goes on,” said Filler-Corn.

Garren Shipley, a spokesman for House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert, said Filler-Corn called Gilbert on Friday. “The House Republican caucus appreciates her pledge to a smooth transition to the incoming majority,” Shipley said.

With Republicans in Virginia suddenly one Senate seat away from total control of state government, attention turned almost immediately Wednesday to a pair of Democratic senators with a history of siding with the GOP on key issues like education and abortion.

And on Wednesday morning, the two men, Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, and Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond, appeared to be delighting in a sudden surge of interest in their policy ideas and positions.

“It’s a new day,” said Morrissey, a pro-life Democrat who said Texas-style abortion legislation goes too far but declined to say what changes to Virginia law he might be inclined to support. “I am a very strong proponent of the right to life. That’s as far as I’m going to go. Folks can read into it what they want; I will carefully consider any and all legislation.”

Petersen, who joined with Morrissey and Republicans earlier this year to make school reopening a focus of the legislative session, meanwhile, continued to criticize restrictions on after school activities and mask mandates that Democrats have generally supported — a subject of many passionate floor speeches he delivered over the past year.

“Once we go back into session it will have been two years since the pandemic began,” Petersen said. “I think we’re getting to the point where we need to move on and get on with our lives.”

The comparisons to moderate Democratic holdouts in Washington, Arizona’s Sen. Kristen Sinema and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, were instantaneous.

In several closely watched Virginia House of Delegates races, Democrats held on to their seats in reliably blue districts in Northern Virginia — but it appeared Republicans were on track to regain majority of the Virginia House.

There were still a handful of uncalled races Wednesday afternoon. But, so far, Republicans have picked up four House seats, including flipping the 28th District in Stafford County and Fredericksburg City, where Democratic incumbent Joshua Cole was defeated by Republican challenger Tara Durant, the AP projected Wednesday.

Republicans also lead in three other races that had been in Democratic control, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections.

Overall, Republicans need to flip six seats to win an outright majority in the House.

Democrats went into Election Day defending a 55-45 majority.

While Democratic incumbents in Northern Virginia cruised to reelection early, some races in competitive districts in Loudoun and Prince William counties were nail-biters late into the night.

It’s an election that some political watchers see as a referendum on the sweeping progressive reforms Democrats pushed through the General Assembly over the past two years, including legalizing marijuana, tightening gun safety laws and repealing the death penalty, and others see as providing an early glimpse into the mood of the U.S. electorate early into President Joe Biden’s term.

In 2020, the General Assembly passed a law requiring local school divisions to adopt model policies extending rights to transgender students. But even as debates over those policies have convulsed school board meetings across the state and been debated by the candidates for governor, many districts remain out of compliance .

They’ve either rejected the Virginia Department of Education model policy outright or are adopting standards that fall short of the department’s guidelines.

Earlier this month, VPM reported that only two divisions in central Virginia have adopted policies that are fully consistent with the model. And at least six school boards, including Augusta, Bedford and Pittsylvania counties, have voted to explicitly reject the policy, according to tracking by Equality Virginia, an advocacy organization for the LGBTQ community.

“It really does have me scratching my head because these school boards need to be in compliance with state and federal law,” said Equality Virginia Executive Director Vee Lamneck. “And that’s what this guidance really helps school boards do.” The document lays out detailed steps for addressing the rights of students, from maintaining privacy about their transgender status (including from their parents, in the case of nonsupportive families) to developing gender neutral dress codes and allowing them to use the restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identities.

Beyond the fact that many districts aren’t following with the law, there also appears to be little, if any, enforcement. This summer, James Lane, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, sent a memo informing divisions that they assumed “all legal responsibility for noncompliance.” But the Department of Education doesn’t have the authority to assess penalties or otherwise pressure local boards to adopt consistent policies (the department isn’t even tracking which divisions are meeting the standards, according to spokesperson Ken Blackstone).

Democratic control of Virginia state government over the past two years has allowed lawmakers to dramatically reshape public policy with legislation reforming the criminal justice system, loosening abortion restrictions and expanding voting access.

Now voters are about to weigh in on whether that’s the direction they wanted for the commonwealth. While the marquee race for governor is drawing the most attention in the Nov. 2 election, the balance of power in the 100-seat House of Delegates is also on the line.

“What we’re about to see is a referendum on, ‘Is Virginia as far left as the Democrats acted?’” said Garren Shipley, a spokesman for the House Republican caucus.

The impact of the Election Day outcome is likely to echo far beyond Virginia. The state’s unusual off-year elections routinely draw outsize national scrutiny as a possible indicator of voter sentiment heading into the midterms the following year.

Virginia House Democrats have flipped most of the state’s battleground districts in the past two elections. This year, they are mostly playing defense, aiming to keep incumbents in about a dozen key, geographically scattered seats. They also have their eyes on a few possible pickups.

Observers on both sides of the aisle generally agree that Republicans, who have trailed significantly in fundraising, have a tougher climb. But some say a flip in control is not out of the realm of possibility.

A group of business and higher education leaders are pushing an $880 million proposal to make Virginia public colleges and universities more affordable and help industries facing worker shortages fill jobs.

The $880 million Growth4VA proposal, developed by the Virginia Business Higher Education Council, is split into two different categories: $300 million for career development and $580 million for financial aid for both students and institutions.

Business leaders at a rollout event Thursday stressed the importance of the General Assembly making the investment in the 2022 legislative session, citing the rare opportunity to use a budget surplus, unallocated federal relief funds and growing state revenues. Earlier this year,Gov. Ralph Northam signed legislation that offers free community college tuition to students who go into high-demand fields.

“There’s no question in my mind that there’s a will in the General Assembly and in both the candidates for governor, as well as Governor Northam, to do this,” said Don Finley, president of Virginia Business Higher Education Council.

The proposal, which envisions tax credits for employers and aid for students and interns, highlights the need to allocate $300 million toward increasing degrees in career fields that need more workers, such as health care and middle-skill jobs. Starting partnerships between businesses and higher-education institutions to provide internships for students is also essential to the future of Virginia’s economy, according to the proposal.

“When educators and employers in an industry or region collaborate to develop career-focused pathways, they align curricula so graduates gain the education and skills employers need, and they provide students with paid internships and other applied learning experiences that prepare them for the workplace, often supplying connections that lead to full-time employment,” the plan says.

Virginia Democrats are playing defense in nearly a dozen competitive House of Delegates districts this year as they defend their new majority against GOP challengers hoping to win back ground lost during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Commentators, observers and strategists across the political spectrum say they would not be shocked if Democrats lost between two and three seats to Republicans, an outcome that would still leave the party with a narrow majority in a chamber where they currently hold a five-seat advantage.

And some members of both parties say it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Democrats lose the majority entirely, ending the party’s unified control of state government after only two years — even if Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe is victorious in his own tight race against Republican Glenn Youngkin.

“I think there are serious challenges to holding onto this trifecta,” said Gaby Goldstein, co-founder of Sister District Action Network, a Democratic-allied group that has been fundraising and phone banking for candidates in 12 competitive House districts. “I think Democrats need to be awake and aware of that possibility — any possibility that we might lose.”

She cited state-wide polls showing low enthusiasm among Democratic voters, who during Trump’s presidency turned out in droves for Virginia’s typically sleepy off-year elections.

With Trump out of office and President Joe Biden facing his own popularity problems, Democrats worry it will be tougher to get their supporters to the polls. “We know right now that Republicans have their base fired up, and we need the same,” said Heather Williams, the executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw and Sen. Janet Howell, who chairs the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, haven’t said for sure they won’t run again in 2023. But the Virginia Redistricting Commission is drawing lines like they aren’t.

The two influential Northern Virginia Democrats didn’t respond to requests from the Mercury this week asking for confirmation they won’t seek another four-year term. Meanwhile, one of their colleagues is treating it as known fact.

“Those are the two that are not running for re-election,” Sen. George Barker, D-Fairfax, a member of the Redistricting Commission, said earlier this month while explaining his own proposal for how Fairfax County should be divided up in the new map.

Barker’s remarks appear to be having an impact.

At a meeting this week, one of the commission’s consultants said proposed Northern Virginia Senate districts had been tweaked to avoid pairing incumbents who intend to run again in 2023.

According to an analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project, the draft Senate map now only pairs Howell with Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Loudoun, and Saslaw with Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax.

The significance of those comments didn’t go unnoticed by some statehouse watchers.

When she was sworn in as the first woman to serve as speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, Eileen Filler-Corn said she was struck by the diversity of the new Democratic majority looking back at her.

A year later, she was standing in a mostly empty room, speaking to “squares on a computer” as the oldest continuous legislative body in the Western Hemisphere tried lawmaking via Zoom.

It’s not yet clear when the House will return to normal. But after two years in power, Filler-Corn says she’s confident Virginia voters still want Democrats in charge.

“We heard the issues that were important to Virginians,” Filler-Corn said in a recent interview with The Virginia Mercury. “We campaigned saying we were going to do X, Y and Z. We were very upfront about it. Very bold. And there is no doubt about it that we followed through.”

The General Assembly approved legislation Wednesday that will make marijuana legal on July 1.

The votes make Virginia the 16th state to legalize the drug and the first in the South to take the step, though retail sales won’t begin until Jan. 1, 2024.

“The time has come for our state to legalize marijuana,” said House Majority Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, who sponsored the bill, arguing the revised legislation ensures “that while we’re doing the complicated work of standing up a commercial market, we aren’t delaying immediate reforms that will make our commonwealth more equitable for all Virginians.”

The product of months of negotiation and last-minute amendments, the final legislation is complex and, in some key areas, ambiguous about what will and won’t be allowed.

The Virginia General Assembly voted Wednesday to tighten some Virginia Parole Board procedures at issue in a series of critical watchdog reports last year, while approving funding for an outside investigation into how one of those reports was prepared and edited.

Disagreement over the direction of that investigation led to fiery speeches from Republican legislators, who denounced it as a “sham” and said its limited scope fell far short of Gov. Ralph Northam’s calls to clear up the controversy surrounding a Parole Board run by Democratic appointees under fire for violating state law and its own procedures in releasing inmates.

“This is the final act of a cover-up,” said House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah.

Democrats said Republicans were trying to stir up an election-year controversy and wouldn’t be satisfied with any investigation that doesn’t confirm their suspicions.

Personal possession and home cultivation would be legal starting in July.

The Virginia Legislature voted Wednesday to accelerate its timeline for marijuana legalization to July 1 instead of January 2024.

Personal possession and home cultivation would be legal starting in July. Marijuana sales still wouldn’t start until 2024, giving the government time to set up a cannabis regulatory agency to oversee the new industry.

The House voted 53-44 and the Senate voted 21-20 to adopt changes requested by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam after lawmakers sent a legalization bill to his desk in February. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax cast the deciding vote in the Senate.

Other changes: The governor requested accelerating the record-sealing and expungement provisions for past marijuana offenses and stronger labor protections for marijuana industry workers. He also proposed two budget amendments that would fund public health campaigns and training for law enforcement officers to recognize impaired driving.

When Virginia’s General Assembly first took up legislation billed as a major step toward giving regular people more control over their data in an increasingly online world, some of the first testimony lawmakers heard came from tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon.

Both companies said they were in full support of Virginia’s effort to become just the second state in America to pass its own data privacy bill, an early marker in a debate still unfolding in other states and at the national level.

Supporters of Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act, approved by the General Assembly this year and already signed by Gov. Ralph Northam, say the fact that Virginia was able to pass such significant legislation without a major fight is a testament to the quality of the bill, which lays out new consumer protections while largely shielding companies from a flood of data-related lawsuits.

Noting that an estimated 70 percent of internet traffic flows through servers in Virginia, Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax, said Virginia’s legislation could be “a good starting place for a national privacy bill.”

Virginia Mercury editors Ned Oliver Sarah Vogelsong Graham Moomaw|Kate Masters have done the best publicly available summary of what’s the Democrats have accomplished with control over Virginia’s three branches. Below are the first paragraphs of their coverage on key issues.

Elections and voting

Making it easier to vote was a top priority when Democrats took control, and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the pace of change to Virginia’s once-strict election laws.

Climate change

Before Democrats regained power, the state had passed no significant laws aimed at addressing climate change. In short order, policies began bubbling up just as surely as tidal floods in a Hampton Roads storm sewer.

Education

When Democrats took control of the General Assembly, they pledged to increase funding for education — touting it as a priority for the 2020 session.

Health

Virginia expanded Medicaid before Democrats took control of the General Assembly, allowing hundreds of thousands of previously ineligible Virginians to gain coverage. But in the two years since, they’ve made significant changes to the state health care exchange in an effort to stabilize enrollment and lower the prices on premiums..

Minimum wage

Democrats voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $12 an hour over the next three years — the first increase the state has seen since 2009, when the federal minimum went up to $7.25 an hour.

Guns

Before winning their majorities, Democrats made it clear they wanted to pass tighter laws to prevent potentially dangerous people from having access to guns and allow firearm bans in more public places. They mostly delivered on that front, but they’ve stopped short of outlawing specific types of weaponry.

Criminal justice

From abolishing the death penalty to legalizing marijuana, Democrats enacted sweeping reforms touching all aspects of the state’s criminal justice system.

Civil rights

The party has taken both concrete and symbolic steps on matters of freedom and equality. After his yearbook blackface scandal, Northam led an effort to repeal nearly 100 outdated, discriminatory laws still on the books. This year Democrats extended that symbolic step to LGBTQ rights, voting to repeal a ban on gay marriage still in the state Constitution, which was invalidated by a 2015 Supreme Court ruling.

Utility reform 

Democrats have remained deeply divided on electric utility reform over the past two years, with many House members joining with a cadre of Republicans in that chamber to push for a set of changes to state code that would restore much of the authority of Virginia’s public utility regulators, the State Corporation Commission, to regulate rates and earnings. Powerful members of the Senate however, with longstanding ties to the utilities, and particularly Dominion Energy, have been reluctant to relinquish legislative control, even amid regular reports of excessive profits by the monopolies.

Campaign finance

In his 2007 autobiography, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a prolific Democratic fundraiser, said his father taught him “money in politics was neither evil nor good.”

Taxes

Though the Democratic majorities have rewritten swathes of state policy to make Virginia more culturally progressive, they’ve shown less appetite for addressing economic disparities by changing the tax code.

Yes, Virginia, we have a budget!

This year I was thrilled to be appointed again by the Speaker as a conferee to work out differences between the House and Senate budgets. This evening, we adopted the final report. I believe it is a budget Virginians can be proud of.

While individual bills often get the most attention, the budget is arguably the most important reflection of our values. This year’s budget process has been a roller coaster ride. After adopting an initial budget in March 2020, we had to cut $2.8 billion as a result of a COVID-driven revenue shortfall. Going into session, we anticipated a revenue rebound of $1.2 billion. Finally, a mid-session re-forecast provided an additional $730 million. That rebound was great news – but it still means we have about a billion dollars less in revenue from just a year ago.

Here are just a few of the budget highlights:

• Income Tax Relief – $221M revenue reduction in order to fund income tax relief to individuals and businesses related to conformity with the federal CARES Act.
• State Employee Pay Raises – 5% pay raise for state employees beginning July 1, 2021.
• Virginia Retirement System – $100M deposit to the VRS to reduce unfunded liabilities. This is a key investment that will help to stabilize the system for the long-term.
• PreK-12 Education – $443M to hold public school funding steady from the original 2020 appropriation; $40M for schools to address COVID-related learning loss; and, $76M to support increases in school counselors, social workers, psychologists, and behavioral analysts.
• Teacher Pay Raises – State share of 5% pay raises for teachers. The Governor originally proposed a 2% bonus.
• Preschool – $11.1M for increased investment in the Virginia Preschool Initiative.
• Northern Virginia Cost-to-Compete – $14.6M more in supplemental funding to Northern Virginia in recognition of the higher cost of living for our region.
• Higher Education – $149M to our institutions of higher learning to maintain affordable access through tuition stabilization and need-based financial assistance.
• Human Resources – $173M in new spending for human resources, with a focus on long-term care, maternal and child health, and behavioral and developmental services. This includes $14.2M to add 435 Developmental Disability waiver slots in FY22, bringing the total for FY22 to 985 slots.
• Vaccinations – $89M for mass vaccination efforts to maximize new federal dollars.
• Water Quality – An additional $155M to meet our Chesapeake Bay restoration targets, including investments in wastewater treatment, stormwater management, and agricultural best management practices.
• Broadband – Additional funding of $99M for broadband deployment in unserved areas.
• Virginia Employment Commission – $10M to increase customer service levels and $5M to finish modernizing VEC’s IT systems to enable more efficient service delivery.
• Voter Registration – $16.7M to replace and strengthen the state’s voter registration system.
• Transportation – $83.5M to improve commuter rail service on the VRE Manassas Line and $32.4M to support and stabilize Metro.
• Reserves – An additional $250M to the Revenue Reserve Fund. This brings combined balances in reserves to $2.16 billion, or about 9% of general fund revenues.

That last bullet deserves additional comment. Something we are proud of in Virginia is that we have maintained a AAA bond rating since 1938 – longer than any other state. This saves Virginia considerable amounts of money and reflects a commitment to keeping our budget structurally sound. While states are currently the beneficiaries of large amounts of federal assistance, it would be irresponsible to think that this will continue in perpetuity. Building up our reserves will ensure that Virginia can successfully transition once federal COVID-19 funding goes away.

Like most members, I introduced my own budget amendments and was pleased to see many of them incorporated into the final budget. These included funding for Northern Virginia Family Services, Brain Injury Services, Chesapeake Bay restoration, the Virginia International Trade Plan, Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension, and our regional planning district commissions.

You can find a more detailed overview of the budget here and a list of my amendments here.

In-Person Learning

Few issues have garnered more constituent communication than SB1303, which deals with bringing our children back into the classroom. This is a personal issue for my family as well, as our 12 year old attempts to navigate his first year of middle school. While he is continuing to learn, and his teachers have done an amazing job, the learning loss is definitely real.

When SB1303 came over from the Senate, it simply mandated in-person learning. What came out of the House, and was eventually passed by the Senate, takes us to full in-person learning, but has guardrails to ensure safety. This includes incorporating CDC and VDH guidelines to the maximum extent practical and the ability of a school board to move specific schools back to virtual learning based on transmission metrics. Importantly, the bill allows parents to choose a virtual approach for their students based on family situations. All teachers must be offered the vaccine prior to in-person learning (which is occurring now under Phase 1b) and the bill maintains the current process for teachers to work virtually through a reasonable ADA accommodation.

The bill passed with a strong bi-partisan vote of 88Y-9N in the House and 36Y-3N in the Senate. I voted aye.

Standards of Learning

The dreaded SOL tests! It is a topic of much consternation when I speak with parents, students, and teachers alike. The Code of Virginia simply establishes that there will be SOL assessments, the purpose of which is to ensure that educational progress can be compared across Virginia. That is a laudable goal. Unfortunately, many of these tests have turned into high-stakes end-of-the-year tests that can promote rote memorization over critical thinking and applying what has been learned to the real world.

This year we passed changes to the SOL assessments that I am genuinely excited about. HB2027 replaces end-of-the-year tests with a through-assessment model where students take a series of three lower stakes tests throughout the year. That way teachers have a better sense of where a student is starting out, can make mid-year adjustments, and then see how the student has progressed at the end of the year. While the bill applies only to SOL tests from grades three through eight, if it is successful, it could be applied to all levels.

Legislation to classify chemical recycling as manufacturing rather than solid waste management is on its way to the governor despite early resistance from the House of Delegates.

The hotly contested bill, which supporters say will encourage the repurposing of plastic waste while creating jobs and opponents say will allow the fledgling industry to sidestep regulation, passed the House Monday on a 90-8 vote.

Key to its success was a move by lawmakers to yoke the advanced recycling bill to a proposal from Del. Betsy Carr, D-Richmond, that would ban all food vendors from using plastic foam food containers starting in 2025.

A proposal to make it illegal for Virginia politicians to use campaign funds to enrich themselves failed in the state Senate Tuesday, the latest sign of the legislature’s continuing wariness on campaign finance reform.

Several senators said they agreed with the proposal generally, but insisted policymakers should take more time to study it before imposing new rules on candidates running in Virginia’s wide-open fundraising system.

“The critical component here is to actually get it right,” said Sen. Jill Vogel, R-Fauquier, an election lawyer who noted that she sponsored a similar bill in the past and wants it to be wrapped into an upcoming study on comprehensive campaign finance reform.

Under Virginia’s existing laws, political candidates are free to take as much money as they can get from any willing individual donor or corporation. But they don’t have to use it for their campaign.

When Virginia senators passed a bill requiring local school divisions to provide in-person instruction by the summer, some anticipated the legislation would face an uphill battle in the House.

Nearly a month later, though, the same legislation is now on the verge of passing both chambers after several rounds of revisions — and mounting pressure to return children to school buildings.

Just a few days after the Senate vote, Gov. Ralph Northam directed Virginia’s 132 local divisions to begin offering in-person classes by March 15, saying that months of remote learning was “taking a toll on our children and our families.” Northam’s announcement followed a pledge from President Joe Biden to reopen schools within his first 100 days of office, and new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on safely reopening schools and mitigating the spread of COVID-19 in buildings.

Virginia lawmakers gave final passage to legislation abolishing the death penalty Monday, sending the bill to Gov. Ralph Northam, who has said he’ll sign it.

Northam’s signature would make Virginia the first state in the South and the 23rd in the nation to end capital punishment.

“This legislation says a lot about who we are as a commonwealth, what kind of values we have as a commonwealth,” said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, who sponsored the legislation in the Senate. “It says a lot about how we value human life. It says a lot about how our commonwealth is going to move past some of our darkest moments in terms of how this punishment was applied and who it was applied to. This vote also says a lot about justice.”

When the General Assembly voted last year to ramp up Virginia’s minimum wage to $12, agricultural employees were among a handful of groups excluded from the increase — an exemption that traces its roots to Jim Crow-era segregation.

Lawmakers in the Senate said Monday they stand by that decision, voting down legislation passed by the House of Delegates that would have extended the state’s employment laws to farmworkers for the first time.

“I understand the exuberance and I understand the need to move forward, but we just had a robust discussion on this last year,” said Sen. Lynwood Lewis, D-Accomack, one of 10 lawmakers on the Senate’s Commerce and Labor Committee who opposed the legislation.

The Senate Commerce and Labor Committee on Monday swiftly killed the last of more than half a dozen bills this session that aimed to reform Virginia’s system of electric utility rate review, which is seen by Wall Street investors as favorable to the utilities and by critics as an example of legislative capture by companies with an outsize influence over the General Assembly.

The move angered the growing number of groups and lawmakers of both parties in Virginia that over the past few years have been lobbying to roll back regulations seen as enabling excessive profits for the state’s two largest electric monopolies, Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power.

“It’s a shame that the committee decided that it should not be the policy of the commonwealth that monopoly utility rates should be just and reasonable,” said Will Cleveland, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center who frequently argues against the utilities before the State Corporation Commission. “It was clear that the Senate committee had no intention of debating the merits or the policy of the bills today.”

Fifteen years ago, more than 1.3 million Virginians said marriage should only mean a union between a man and a woman and same-sex couples shouldn’t be entitled to similar status that would give them the same rights under the law as straight couples.

That was the view of 57 percent of Virginians who voted in 2006, more than enough to put a same-sex marriage ban in the state Constitution.

Much has changed since then. And Democratic lawmakers want to give a new generation of Virginians an opportunity to make a different statement in 2022.

Virginia is, famously, a state that prides itself on being business-friendly. That makes it all the more interesting that a number of bills favoring consumers have made it through the House. Democrats have led the charge, but several of the bills earned bipartisan support even in the face of utility opposition.

This doesn’t guarantee their luck will hold. Democrats aren’t just more numerous in the House, they are also younger and more independent-minded than the old guard Democrats in control of the Senate. The second half of the session is going to be a lot more challenging for pro-consumer legislation.

The action will be especially hot in the coming days around five bills dealing with utility reform and a customer’s “right to shop” for renewable energy (HB2048). All these bills passed the House with at least some Republican support. But they are headed to Senate Commerce and Labor, which, though dominated by Democrats, has a long history of protecting utilities.

But progressive priorities like reforming campaign finance appear dead for the year.

As Gov. Ralph Northam tacked on an extra two weeks to the Virginia legislative session, lawmakers reached Crossover Day on Friday. The deadline for a bill to be approved by at least one chamber offered a glimpse into broad changes Democrats hope to make in criminal justice, beginning with legalizing marijuana and abolishing the death penalty. It also showed the tension between moderates and progressives in the party on questions of resuming school and worker rights.

Criminal justice reform advocates said lawmakers were effecting a sea change that extended beyond marijuana and capital punishment to include sentencing, probation and parole. Republicans, in the minority of both chambers of the General Assembly, say the sweeping approach would result in Virginia becoming too easy on criminals.

Political commentator Bob Holsworth recalled that Democrats once supported Republican Gov. George Allen’s push in the 1990s to crack down on crime, including eliminating parole. Now the party, in its second year in power in the state legislature, is driving the change.