Not with a bang, but a whimper

This story has been updated since publication.

Despite lofty promises from Democrats and Republicans, divided government in Richmond meant few wins or losses for either party during the 2024 General Assembly session — and few sweeping changes for Virginia in the year ahead.

“The only thing that the legislature really did is the one thing they have to do: Pass a budget,” says Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington who has tracked the state legislature for decades. “This is a session that would qualify as one of the more forgettable ones.” 

After the Democratic-controlled General Assembly released a two-year budget proposal in March packed with party priorities but lacking most of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s tax reform proposals, the prospects for a compromise ahead of the June 30 close of the state’s fiscal year seemed dim. In 2023, Republicans and Democrats took more than six months to agree to amendments to the last biennial budget. Since then, the partisan split has only deepened, with Democrats narrowly retaking control of the House of Delegates in the November 2023 elections. 

Despite that, the General Assembly on May 13 approved a budget deal with nearly unanimous support. Only seven Republicans voted against the spending plan. 

Karen Hult, a professor of political science at Virginia Tech, says a major contributor to the compromise was greater than expected revenues: While earlier budget proposals had been based on a forecast that revenues would contract in fiscal year 2024, collections through April grew 5%, giving the state an estimated $1.1 billion extra. The May deal relied on $525 million of that excess, as well as savings tied to Youngkin’s vetoes of Democratic legislation. 

“The increase in revenues by the time of the special session clearly did grease the wheels a lot,” Hult says. 

That deal kept intact Democrats’ spending plans, particularly on K-12 and higher education. 

“The increased investment in K-12 spending, that was a big priority for us in the beginning, and one I think we mostly achieved,” says Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, a member of the Senate Finance Committee. However, he continues, “We really need to make bigger progress in the future, because now I think we’re mainly just treading water.” 

In return, Democrats agreed to strip out two provisions that were particularly objectionable to Youngkin. One would have expanded the state’s sales tax to digital goods and services — a loophole the governor had pledged to correct in his own budget proposal, a broader package that also included sales tax increases and income tax cuts. The other would have required Virginia to rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multistate carbon market that Youngkin has accused of imposing a “hidden tax” on utility customers. As of press time for this story, a pending lawsuit over the governor’s withdrawal of Virginia from the market had a hearing scheduled for late June in Floyd County Circuit Court. 

“I know these actions are not popular with my colleagues in some of our caucus, and many feel that we are essentially kicking the can down the road,” Democratic
Sen. Louise Lucas said May 13. But, she added, the compromises “were necessary to get a budget before you today.” 

On the chamber floor, Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, described the conversations leading up to the deal as “tense.” 

And “some of them might have been a little more than tense,” he added during the special session. “But at the end of the day, we came up with a product that continues to move Virginia forward, focuses on our kids’ education, focuses on our public safety professionals and also focuses on those individuals who cannot support themselves.” 

Despite the budget agreement, Farnsworth says, gridlock was evident on many of the key issues the General Assembly faced, from the legalization of recreational marijuana sales and restrictions on abortion to minimum wage increases and tax reforms. And the final deal, he says, “could have been worked out in February. 

“The Democrats, it seems, would rather wait for a Democratic governor than try to make compromises with a Republican right now. And the Republican governor isn’t willing to make the big compromises that would have been necessary for a more successful legislative session,” he says. 

The polarization was also reflected in the 201 bills Youngkin vetoed — shattering in one year the four-year veto record held during previous Virginia governors’ terms.

Arena failure

No issue colored the 2024 legislative session more than the question of whether the General Assembly would back an ambitious proposal by Youngkin to build a $2 billion arena in Alexandria for the Washington Wizards and Capitals teams. 

The massive project, which would also have included a performing arts venue, practice facilities and commercial and residential properties, was a signature priority for Youngkin, a former top executive of the Carlyle Group who has emphasized the need to make Virginia more attractive for economic development. 

In December 2023, the plan got the backing of the state’s Major Employment and Investment Project Approval Commission, a group of lawmakers from the legislature’s money committees. But it quickly ran into hurdles in the larger General Assembly, which had to sign off on the creation of a state authority to oversee the arena’s development. 

Lucas, a high-profile and powerful Youngkin opponent who chairs the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, repeatedly blocked efforts to create the authority.

Democrats’ March budget plan also omitted the proposal, leading Youngkin to accuse the Senate of refusing “to give the single largest economic development deal in Virginia’s history any serious, meaningful consideration, breaking their own long-standing tradition in the process and avoiding the broad bipartisan support in both houses.” 

In March, the Wizards’ and Capitals’ owner, Monumental Sports & Entertainment CEO Ted Leonsis, reached a deal with Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser for the NHL and NBA teams to stay put in the District, killing the Alexandria proposal. 

Lucas touted her win on X, tweeting, “We avoided the Monumental Disaster!”

Hult says the proposed Alexandria arena’s defeat “set the context for not a great deal of trust and some clear, loud disagreement and seeming disagreement on both sides to work together.” 

No to minimum wage, weed

Youngkin in turn dealt two major blows to Democrats, vetoing bills that would have increased the state minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026 and established a legal retail market for marijuana sales in Virginia. 

The minimum wage increases would have completed a program Democrats began in 2020 to raise the state wage floor from the federal $7.25 per hour. Laws passed that year raised the minimum wage incrementally to $12 by 2023 but left it up to future legislatures to complete two further hikes to $15. 

Although Democrats argued inflation had made the additional increases critical to ensure low-wage workers could afford Virginia’s rising cost of living, Youngkin rejected that argument, saying in his veto statement that the “wage mandate imperils market freedom and economic competitiveness.

“Successful states recognize that the government does not need to set labor prices; instead, they prioritize creating an economic environment conducive to wage growth,” he wrote. 

Democrats were “expecting” the veto, Surovell says, “but hoping [Youngkin] might come around.” 

Youngkin also struck down legislation to establish a retail market for marijuana in Virginia. While Democrats legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2021 and medical cannabis sales were legalized in 2019, disagreements over equity considerations stymied them from establishing a frame-work for legalizing commercial sales before Republicans retook control of the governor’s office and the House the following year. 

This year’s bill would have set up a statewide system to license, regulate and tax recreational sales beginning in May 2025. Marijuana is currently sold illegally throughout Virginia through a black market that experts say is worth billions. 

Youngkin nixed the marijuana retail market proposal in a lengthy veto statement that said legalizing sales “endangers Virginians’ health and safety” and “does not eliminate the illegal black-market sale of cannabis, nor guarantee product safety.

“Attempting to rectify the error of decriminalizing marijuana by establishing a safe and regulated marketplace is an unachievable goal,” he wrote. 

But Greg Habeeb, a former Republican state delegate who now lobbies for the Virginia Cannabis Association, says, “The status quo, which is just illegal sales, is unacceptable. It is undisputed that we have a multibillion-dollar industry in Virginia. It is undisputed that those products are untested. Everyone agrees to the underlying facts.” 

While nearly all Republicans voted against the bill, Habeeb says that in private, many expressed support for the view that the state should be regulating and taxing sales.

“I think a lot of Republicans think the right political position is to oppose regulating these sales,” he says. “I think they are wrong now. I think society and the party have moved in the other direction.”

Asked about the administration’s plans for handling problems related to the marijuana black market, Youngkin spokesperson Christian Martinez says that state and local law enforcement and regulatory agencies “continue to work together to address the distribution of illegal drugs in Virginia.”

To date, he notes, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services has issued 13,911 violations, resulting in $8.8 million in preliminary civil penalty assessments to 266 businesses.

Skill games and casinos

Also not in the cards for Virginians this year: legalization of skill games, the slots-like machines that proliferated in convenience stores across the state until the Supreme Court of Virginia reinstated a ban passed by the General Assembly in 2021. 

Next to the arena deal, few issues racked up as much debate during the session as skill games, with lobbyists aggressively pushing for legislation to legalize and regulate the industry. While proponents argue the machines offer critical revenue to small business owners and the state, critics say proposals offered insufficient safeguards for young people and gambling addicts, omitted key oversight provisions and sidestepped requirements imposed on other gambling sectors. 

The issue reached a stalemate after the Senate rejected extensive amendments Youngkin made to an earlier bill, leading the governor to veto the original proposal. However, lawmakers and Youngkin have both indicated they are willing to return to Richmond to continue debating the proposal.

Meanwhile, the General Assembly agreed to legislation that would block further referendums on casinos in Richmond and allow a referendum in Petersburg. The selection of a preferred operator for a casino in Petersburg has since sparked a political fight over whether Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Petersburg, inappropriately meddled in the process, according to media reports. In an April 30 report by the Virginia Mercury, Petersburg city councilors said Aird pressured the city manager into signing a letter saying that the city would award the project to Bally’s, although later in April, Petersburg City Council unanimously chose The Cordish Cos. as its partner. Aird disputed the accusation.

Legacy admissions on the outs 

One of the few major policy shifts to receive unanimous backing during the 2024 session was a prohibition on legacy admissions at Virginia’s public universities. 

Seen as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 overturning of affirmative action in college admissions, the legislation sailed through the General Assembly and garnered an early signature from Youngkin, who has said that “admission to Virginia’s universities and colleges should be based on merit.” 

“It just seemed as though legacy admissions had run its course,” says Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, who chairs the House Education Committee. “I think it makes a lot of sense for where we’re at.”

House and Senate leaders said they would call special sessions later in June to address an outcry over the Virginia Military Survivors and Dependents college tuition program, which was set to be cut back as part of the bipartisan budget enacted in May. On the table were at least two plans. Both would protect funding for students enrolled this year, and Lucas’ proposal would include two funding studies by the end of the year. 

In late June, the House unanimously passed a bill repealing all changes to the tuition waiver, earning praise from Youngkin, but Lucas stonewalled a vote on a similar bill in the Senate a week earlier. On July 1, the Senate Finance committee is set to meet to discuss the repeal, after a couple dozen military veterans, spouses and children addressed state senators at a work group session Friday, often pleading to maintain the waiver.

Other legislation with major implications for Virginia students will require every school division in the state to offer high school students free access to a core set of dual enrollment courses for which the student earns both high school and college credit. Colleges statewide will accept credit for those courses, and a work group will begin examining how the program can be extended to career and technical education. 

Del. Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield, a former county school board member who carried the proposal in the House, says the bill aims to correct “a highly inequitable system across the state where, depending on where you live, you have different access” to dual enrollment. 

State procurement 

Starting in July, the state will give preferred status in procurement decisions to goods produced in Virginia, following successful legislation carried by Republican Sen. Bill DeSteph and Democratic Del. Michael Feggans, who both represent Virginia Beach. Language allows Virginia manufacturers the chance to match lower prices offered by suppliers in other states under certain circumstances. 

The bill “prioritizes Virginia manufacturing goods first and the U.S. second for state procurement,” DeSteph said in February. “This puts us in line similar to our surrounding states.” 

Less successful was legislation from Del. Jeion Ward, D-Hampton, that would have set a statewide goal to set aside 42% of all discretionary spending by executive branch agencies and higher education institutions for small, woman- and minority-owned businesses. The state would have been required to increase its use of such businesses by 3% annually until the 42% target was met.

Youngkin amended the proposal to add a reenactment clause, which will require the General Assembly to pass the legislation again in 2025, and create a work group to further study the idea. Youngkin spokesperson Martinez said the governor believes “significant procurement reforms should be studied.”

“It was hard for me to agree to it, but if I allowed it to go back to [Youngkin], he would probably veto it,” says Ward. “So, I decided it was better for us to give him a little more time and trust him at his word.”

Ward notes that the issue has been repeatedly studied, pointing to reports from 2004, 2010 and 2020 on disparities in Virginia procurement and noting the 42% goal was set by former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a 2014 executive order and reinforced by a similar order from former Gov. Ralph Northam. 

“The majority of our workforce, our businesses are small, women-owned or minority businesses,” Ward says. “So, if we could make sure they were included in the state procurement process, it would benefit everyone.”

Data centers and more

Further studies will also be conducted on blockchain technology, digital asset mining, and cryptocurrency in Virginia, following the passage of bills from Sen. Saddam Azlan Salim, D-Fairfax. 

“This is a space that we are currently not in,” Salim said in February. “The study would essentially help guide us through the process in which we deal with this in the future, including any tax revenue that might come from this.” 

Lawmakers stripped out several provisions from one of the study bills that would have limited some local oversight of digital asset mining and dealt with taxation and liability concerns. That proposal also received pushback from Northern Virginia groups that said it would open the door to further data center expansion in the region. 

Despite more than a dozen bills on the issue, the session saw little movement on data centers, the proliferation of which in Loudoun and Prince William counties has drawn increasing criticism from citizens over noise and water and electricity use. Lawmakers largely deferred those proposals to 2025 to wait for the conclusion of a study on the issue this fall by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. 

The 2024 session saw the end of one long-running stalemate: who should serve on the Virginia State Corporation Commission. The two-year fight between Democrats and Republicans over commissioner appointments had left two of the body’s three seats vacant, forcing the independent agency that oversees banking, utilities and business to temporarily recall former judges to issue major decisions. 

In January, both chambers approved the appointments of Sam Towell, an attorney for Smithfield Foods, and Kelsey Bagot, an attorney for NextEra Energy. They joined Judge Jehmal Hudson, the panel’s chair, on the bench in the spring.