Midnight on Monday was the deadline for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to sign, amend, or veto legislation passed by the General Assembly during its regular 60-day session. Hundreds of bills are now law — and a handful are not — after a sprint to the finish that mixed politics with policy.

Youngkin signed 702 bills, offered amendments on 114, and vetoed a total of 26. All of the session’s bills are bipartisan in that they required passage through the Republican-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate, but all of Youngkin’s vetoes were on bills chiefly carried by Democrats. Twenty one out of the 26 vetoes are on legislation brought by Northern Virginia legislators.

“It’s what one would expect,” said David Ramadan, a former member of the House of Delegates and an expert at George Mason University’s Schar School of Public Policy. “This is both a policy and a political game at this point.”

Youngkin’s vetoes angered Democrats, who said they signaled a partisan tone beyond politics as usual.

“He always talks about how he doesn’t want to be divisive, but when it comes to governing, he doesn’t seem to mind it,” said Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), who had nine of the 10 bills he sent to Youngkin’s desk vetoed, the most of any lawmaker.

What just became law

Youngkin signed more than 700 bills in total for the session (full list here). They vary widely, from a measure that creates a new license plate honoring the nation’s first Black newspaper, The Richmond Planet, to one that allows hunting on Sundays. Others extend teacher’s licenses, make older adults a focus of state supportive housing initiatives, establish a historic preservation fund for sites with significance to communities of color and Indigenous people, and define family leave insurance policies as a class of insurance, among many, many other things.

“These bills are all bipartisan and we can all be proud that together we’ve taken steps to make life easier for Virginians, make our Commonwealth’s economy more competitive, support law enforcement, protect the most vulnerable among us, increase access to health care, and take necessary steps toward making Virginia’s schools the absolute best in the nation,” Youngkin said in a statement.

The days leading up to the midnight deadline are meaningful in that they are a chance for the governor to express affirmative support for an idea or policy, according to Sarah Graham Taylor, the legislative director for the City of Alexandria.

“I think any bill that the governor chooses to take action on, at least to this point, he is choosing to take those actions for very specific reasons to be able to tell a specific story,” she said.

Youngkin championed a few bills publicly in the week leading up to Monday night’s deadline, including a measure that requires schools to alert parents to sexually explicit content in their curricula, which Youngkin said in a statement was a fulfillment of campaign promises to promote parental rights.

Other bills that got special attention were far less controversial, including a series of five animal welfare measures referred to as ‘the beagle bills,’ which passed through the General Assembly unanimously. Youngkin signed them in a ceremony that featured — yes, you guessed it — a lot of politicians holding puppies.

Bills approved by both houses of the legislature that the governor does not amend or veto became law after the midnight deadline, even without a signature. Most of the new laws will take effect on July 1, unless otherwise specified.

What didn’t become law

But it’s the more than 100 amended bills and 26 vetoes — the things that didn’t become law — that were the political focus on Tuesday.

Youngkin’s vetoes run the gamut, from a measure to prohibit drivers of heavy trucks from using cruise control during winter weather to a proposal that would potentially pave the way for incarcerated Virginians to apply for food stamps just before their release. A measure to prohibit Virginia high school athletes from entering into sponsorship deals got the ax, and so did legislation requesting a study of whether the Virginia Department of Health should play a role in regulating swimming pools. A list of all the legislation vetoed by Youngkin is available here.

Governors from both parties have exercised veto power through the years. Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued more than 90 vetoes during his four years in office, the highest number of any Virginia governor, most of them in opposition to a Republican-controlled legislature.

Ramadan says Youngkin’s vetoes are part of the usual political game.

“The number may be little higher than previous years for a first term governor, but certainly not out of the realm of what one should expect in this hyper partisan era that we’re in,” he said.

Some Democratic lawmakers suggested Youngkin’s actions are outside the Richmond norm.

“It’s really disappointing because it looks like he wants to govern as a partisan instead of as a governor for the whole state,” said Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax).

The Youngkin administration referred questions about veto actions to the explanations for the vetoes published in the Virginia legislative database.

Surovell had two of his bills vetoed: a measure to increase the fees for landfills, and a bill that requires commonwealth’s attorneys to provide copies of subpoenas they seek to defense attorneys in criminal cases. The latter bill passed both houses of the General Assembly unanimously.

Youngkin vetoed the landfill bill on the grounds that the added fee would be passed on to consumers. He suggested the other bill would duplicate options already available to defense attorneys to gather the information, and would effectively allow criminal defense attorneys to create roadblocks to witness testimony and cast doubt on the process. (Surovell contends requiring prosecutors to share subpoenas with defense attorneys is standard practice in other types of legal cases.)

Sen. Ebbin of Alexandria, who has been publicly at odds with Youngkin over the governor’s attempt to appoint former Trump administration EPA secretary and coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to a cabinet post, bore the brunt of Youngkin’s vetoes. Youngkin nixed 9 out of the 10 bills Ebbin sent to his desk.

“I’m disappointed that the governor has vetoed so many of my bills,” Ebbin told WAMU/DCist. “I’ve never had a veto before, and these were bipartisan, non-controversial pieces of legislation to make Virginia work better for everyone.”

Ebbin said he hadn’t heard from Youngkin’s office at all in the lead-up to the vetoes, and he still had not received any communication as of Tuesday afternoon. A spokesperson for Youngkin did not answer a direct question about the vetoes of Ebbin’s bills, and instead referred back to the posted explanations.

In more than one case, Youngkin vetoed a measure brought by Ebbin — for example, a tweak to the rules about income tax deductions for business interests — but allowed an identical bill from the House to become law. In another case, he vetoed an Ebbin-patroned bill that would require tickets for gas cars parked in parking spots reserved for electric charging stations, but offered a minor amendment to the House version, carried by Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-Alexandria).

In both cases, Youngkin’s veto explanation suggested the bills were duplicative with the House versions. It’s common for identical bills to pass in both chambers and for both to be signed into law.

Youngkin also vetoed a bill — which Taylor says Alexandria and Northern Virginia localities had backed — to give localities added enforcement options in dealing with slumlords.

In addition to the vetoes, Youngkin offered amendments on 114 bills, including changes to one that would reportedly add penalties for adults for possession of more than an ounce of marijuana.

The General Assembly will have to approve those and other edits — and it’s possible that if they don’t, Youngkin could choose to veto the legislation.

Challenges to Arlington, Loudoun priorities

Some of the vetoes and amendments directly affect Northern Virginia localities. In Virginia, localities only have the power to do things expressly granted to them in Virginia law. If they want to make changes that fall out of those powers — like changing their charter or renaming a state road in their jurisdiction — they have to request legislation from the General Assembly.

That structure gives the General Assembly and the governor power over local decisions in the legislative process — power Youngkin hasn’t been afraid to wield, at times against Northern Virginia localities.

His first veto as governor, issued last month, denied Arlington County’s request to be allowed to hire an independent policing auditor to work with its citizen oversight board. Taylor believes the move was a political signal.

“I would say that the Arlington Community Police Review Board bill getting vetoed had very little to do with the actual content of the bill and more about the the the fact that it was an Arlington bill and an easy Arlington bill for them to kind of take a take a whack at,” Taylor told WAMU/DCist.

Youngkin said he vetoed the Arlington bill because it would not have been fair to police officers.

Youngkin also amended a bill that was originally intended to stagger the terms of Loudoun County school board members, instead requiring that the full board run for reelection this November and again in 2023. . Loudoun County has been a hotbed of the school culture debates that helped propel Youngkin to victory in the polls last November.

“The problem with that change is that that puts the nine members of the school boards off-calendar with any other county officials,” Ramadan, who previously represented part of Loudoun County, told DCist/WAMU. “So it really doesn’t doesn’t fit county-level elections.”

Ramadan and Surovell are skeptical that the proposed amendment would pass the state Senate, where Democrats hold a thin majority.

Youngkin also attached a reenactment clause – an amendment that requires the legislation to be passed again by the General Assembly next year – to multiple bills, including a bill that would change the requirements for people serving on boards and commissions in Falls Church, a bill dealing with shelter requirements for unaccompanied homeless children, and a bill that would strike the term “alien” from state code referring to noncitizens.

What’s next 

While the regular session is over, budget negotiations, along with consideration of a few other major related issues like marijuana legalization and incentives to entice the Washington Commanders to build a new stadium in the commonwealth, have slopped over into an ongoing special session.

“This time, the special session is just about the budget and a slew of other things,” said Ramadan. “Now, members from both sides of the aisle, along with the governor and team, are truly horse trading and negotiating so that they can figure out who’s going to give in on what and who’s going to gain what.”

Lawmakers in the House and Senate are currently trying to resolve a $3 billion gap between the two chambers’ proposed budgets — and make decisions on Youngkin’s proposed tax cuts, and the fate of the grocery tax and the funding it provides to localities.

Surovell said he’s concerned more vetoes from Youngkin could be on the way as those negotiations continue. The governor has the power to nix line items in the budget when it finally comes across his desk.

Meanwhile, the delay in the passage of the budget has left localities unable to finalize their own budgets, because they don’t know yet how much money will be coming to them from the commonwealth for various priorities — or how much they’ll be required to spend to fill in gaps or fulfill mandates in the state budget, Taylor said.

“I think the problem for us locally, and especially in this budget situation, is that we become caught up in things that are far beyond our influence or control,” she said.