2022 GA Recap Part II – The Disappointments and Close Losses!
In Part I of the General Assembly Recap, we told you about some of the great legislative victories – i.e., the positive side of the session. Unfortunately, there were also numerous disappointments in which reasonable bills were defeated typically along partisan lines, with most of the carnage done by the Senate Education & Health committee.
At the beginning of the session, during a Senate Public Education subcommittee, Senator Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) signaled the Democratic majority’s clear intent: “a major thrust this year will be on public [education] and we’re going to see if we can not only improve what Governor Northam has done, as well as try to protect against some of the backwards looking suggestions the new administration has.” Here’s a list of some of the reasonable education, pro-life and parental rights bills that were defeated by this committee:
Education Savings Accounts for Disadvantaged Students - HB 1024 (R-LaRock)
Right to Informed Consent Before an Abortion - HB 212 (R-Greenhalgh)
Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (20 week bill) – SB 710 (R-Chase)
Parental Permission for Family Life Education - HB 789 (R-LaRock)
Parental Review of Sexually Explicit School Materials - HB 1009 (R-Durant)
Parental Consent to School Counseling Services - HB 1034 (R-Ransone)
Religious Exemption for State Mandated Vaccines - HB 306 (R-Freitas)
Make Cultural Competency Training Optional - HB 1093 (R-Batten)
Protect Female Sports From Males Claiming to Be Female - SB 766 (R-Kiggans)
Make the Transgender Model Policies a Local Option - SB 20 (R-Hackworth)
Parental Review of Library Printed and Audiovisual Materials – SB 275 (R-DeSteph)
Despite the divided legislature, with a Republican majority in the House and a Democratic majority in the Senate, and the Senate Education and Health “brick wall,” a few bills we supported nearly passed or were strategically referred to a less favorable committee with enough votes to be defeated.
One of those bills was HB 511, brought by freshman Delegate Marie March (R-Floyd), that’s affectionately referred to as the “Tebow Bill,” which allowed homeschool students to participate in public school athletics. It passed the House 50-49 and was just one vote shy of passing the Senate Education and Health committee, which would’ve sent the bill to the full Senate and Virginia would likely have joined 35 other states who have a similar law. Read HERE for more information.
In a show of desperation, Democrat leadership in the Senate went “committee shopping” and sent HB 156 (R-Byron), which would’ve prohibited Anonymous Teen Sex Text Lines, and HB 304 (R-Freitas), the Born Alive Human Infant Protection Act, bills supported by the administration, to the Senate Rules committee which had enough Democrats to defeat the bills even if there were defectors. (Senate Rules is stacked with 13 Democrats and just 4 Republicans.) For more on what happened, check out our blog HERE. Also, last week, Delegate Nick Freitas (R-Culpeper) gave an impassioned speech on what happened.
The Senate General Laws committee narrowly defeated HB 775 (R-Williams) on a 7 - 7 party line vote, a bill that ensures people can still go to church even if the Governor declares an “emergency” – which we now know can apparently last for years. There is good reason to believe that had this bill made it out of the committee and to the full Senate, it would have gained support from at least one Democrat Senator, like Chap Peterson (D-Fairfax), who has been a strong proponent of keeping Virginia open. After Governor Northam issued one executive fiat after another throughout 2020 and 2021, effectively shutting down most churches and regulating nearly every facet of how they were allowed to conduct their worship services, we now know this law is critical to preventing that from happening again. Hopefully, we will see this bill come back next year.
Finally, another major theme of session was the Governor’s tax reform package which focused on putting more money back in the pockets of families. This session bills that would’ve doubled the standard education or conformed it to the federal standard deduction, mainly HB 472 (R-McNamara) and SB 7 (D-Petersen), were continued to 2023, and slightly different bills (HB 90, R-McNamara and SB 451, D-Boysco) that exempt food and essential personal hygiene products from all state, regional, and local sales taxes (the grocery tax), remain in a conference committee. We now wait on the final 2022-24 biennium budget to see if a deal is struck between House Republicans and Senate Democrats to include these two critical tax reforms.
Final Thoughts
The disappointments we had this year is the result of a combination of choosing not to advance bills for pragmatic reasons and the partisanship we saw in the Democrat-controlled Senate. If anything is clear, real school choice and more parental rights achievements will not be realized until the Senate is comprised of more pro-freedom and pro-family legislators.
