This is the final week of the 2016 General Assembly session. Last Tuesday the House and Senate ceremoniously rejected the opposing house’s version of the budget so that the details of the biennium budget can be worked out in conference. This is the final week for bills to move through the House and the Senate to be considered by the Governor for passage.

Additionally, budget conferees have been named. We expect to see the conference committee report coming tomorrow at the earliest. In the House, the conferees include:

Delegates Chris Jones (chair of the House Appropriations Committee), Steve Landes (Vice Chair), John O’Bannon, Tag Greason, Kirk Cox, Luke Torian (new to the conference committee and the only Democrat).

In the Senate, the conferees are: Tommy Norment (chair of the Senate Finance Committee), Emmett Hanger (co-chair of the Senate Finance Committee), Frank Ruff, Frank Wagner, Steve Newman, Dick Saslaw and Janet Howell.

 

Here is an update on where our priorities stand:

Healthcare

This week a bill to reform Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need Program (COPN) passed the Senate Health and Education committee. This bill would remove barriers for purchasing expensive equipment like MRI machines in exchange for providing a certain amount of free care to low income individuals. Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Bill Hazel noted in his comments to the committee that reforming COPN does not solve the issue of providing a health insurance package to the uninsured. For more information, see the article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch here.

VICPP is disappointed that neither the House’s nor the Senate’s budgets accepted Federal funding to provide 400,000 uninsured Virginians access to Medicaid. The House and Senate budgets reflect this action by removing $3 billion in Federal funding, reversing the identified state savings and reinstating processes to reform the current Medicaid system.

Criminal Justice

SB 458, a bill offered up by Senator McEachin to allow school boards to establish alternatives to suspension, failed to report on the House floor this past week. This bill is part of a series of bills to reduce the number of school children referred to law enforcement. SB 458 failed to report by a 43 to 55 margin.

The Governor’s budget allows the state to invest savings from the closings of Juvenile Justice facilities into community based services. The House and Senate budgets support this measure and establish a workgroup on juvenile justice facilities. Community based services for juveniles have proven to be more effective at rehabilitating youth, and we support the Department of Juvenile Justice transformation.

Immigration

We focused our efforts this session on obtaining driving privileges for immigrants who are authorized to be in the U.S. but who are not eligible for obtaining a driver’s license. A variety of bipartisan bills were introduced in the House of Delegates. All failed, but the Transportation Committee chairman, Delegate Ron Villanueva asked the Department of Motor Vehicles to conduct a study of the issue. At the New American Majority caucus on Friday, representatives of the DMV presented their study plan. The first stakeholders’ meeting will be held in early April to communicate the results of their study to date.

We also worked to raise concern about several bills introduced around “sanctuary” cities, which do not exist in Virginia. These measures (see our immigration bill list below) took the form of requiring jurisdictions to hold individuals in jails who have been detained for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some would have held jurisdictions liable for crimes committed by any detainees released prior to ICE transfer. All of these bills either failed or were sufficiently watered down. (See HB 481, HB 1039, HB 1097, and SB 705.)

Links to bill lists by priority:

If you have questions, please email Becky Bowers-Lanier at: becky@B2Lconsulting.com, or Kim Bobo at kim@virginiainterfaithcenter.org.

 

Roberta Oster General Assembly, Uncategorized