So, what did the Virginia General Assembly actually accomplish this year?

If you’ve been tuning in to the session even sporadically since it started in January, you probably know that the answer is: not a whole lot. As predicted, it’s been a short, mostly politics-rich and policy-poor session, with little agreement between the Democratic majority in the Virginia State Senate and the Republican majority in the House of Delegates. And members on both sides of the aisle are already looking ahead to campaign season this fall, when they’re all running for re-election — in redrawn districts, no less.

There was plenty of political posturing over abortion rights, LGBTQ and nonbinary student policies, voting rights, gun safety, and book banning. But for the most part, it was all just debate — and sometimes, not even, with House Republicans strategically opting to not take floor votes on issues like abortion restrictions. They also declined to reverse Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage, a symbolic action due to the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing those unions nationally.

“There’s a lot of sound and fury, and eventually, it signifies nothing,” said Sarah Graham Taylor, legislative director for the City of Alexandria. “But it still takes up time and energy and effort here when you don’t have much time, energy or effort to expend.”

All of that wasn’t a recipe for lots of legislating. The legislature adjourned sine die on Saturday, and without passing a budget bill. In the meantime, they did pass funding to plug an accidental hole in money for local schools caused by a calculation error made by the state education department.

“I’m pretty sure ‘Sine Die’ is Latin for ‘I Survived Another General Assembly Session and All I Got Was This Skinny Budget,’” Taylor joked on Twitter after the legislature adjourned.

“I think it was predictable to some degree,” said Taylor. “I didn’t expect a lot of big major policy things.”

If legislators tasked with hammering out the final budget are able to come to consensus, Youngkin could call the legislature back to vote on it in a special session. That budget amendment bill could bring with it a number of significant items, including another round of Youngkin administration-backed tax cuts for individuals and possibly corporations, as well as funding for schools, mental health care, and more. Currently, the two sides are deadlocked over tax cuts, according to The Washington Post.

As for Northern Virginia policy priorities like housing, transportation, and mental health, Taylor said the session didn’t have many regionally significant wins. But some of that inertia was to be expected, she said, given the closely divided political control in the legislature.

“Just because it’s a bill patroned by someone from Northern Virginia, in the House, you’re already on your heels,” she said. “That’s why looking for opportunities to make the point that what we’re trying to do is potentially a benefit for localities across the commonwealth … is always really important.”

What’s in it for Northern Virginia?

Of the more than 2,200 bills introduced, close to 600 made it to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s desk for consideration. Youngkin has until April 12 to approve, veto, or offer amendments on the legislation that successfully made it through the whole process.

Heading into the session — even with the expectation that it would be short and contentious — Taylor and other Northern Virginia General Assembly watchers had hope for bipartisan progress on two main issues of concern for the region: housing shortages and community mental health supports. In both cases, Youngkin expressed interest in coming up with some solutions: his proposed budget bill included a $230 million allocation to support community-based mental health services, and his administration released a bulleted list of principles guide possible changes in housing policy to help fill the commonwealth’s growing housing supply shortfall.

On the mental health front, little policy-wise changed, though the General Assembly did pass a bill requiring health insurance companies to cover a visit to a crisis stabilization facility.

But whether localities, particularly those in Northern Virginia, will actually receive funding in the budget to build or expand those facilities remains to be seen. Some local officials previously expressed concern that possible constraints placed on money for crisis stabilization centers could make Northern Virginia less eligible for it than other parts of the state.

Taylor called the funding for crisis stabilization — more than $80 million in both chambers’ budget proposals — “significant.” But she said she’d also be watching to see if the final budget amendment bill also includes support for staffing as well as the actual bricks and mortar of the centers.

“It’s not just about creating crisis stabilization centers or putting more beds online,” she said. “It’s also about ensuring that we have a workforce that can staff these facilities. It’s about ensuring that we have a workforce that is adequately paid to do this work.”

As for housing, Taylor said Alexandria and other localities had hoped the Youngkin administration would throw its weight behind offering funding or added regulatory flexibility for localities trying to put in place policies incentivizing housing construction. But not much materialized, just two bills that require localities to report back to state authorities about the revenues they receive from the permitting process and the policies they try to increase housing supply, along with an analysis of whether they worked or not.

Taylor said she was disappointed there wasn’t more bipartisan progress in both areas. In part, she blamed the inertia on the political pressures of an election year and Youngkin’s potential national political aspirations.

“Bullet points are fine when you’re sort of laying a foundation for something down the road,” she said. “But it’s not governing and it’s not policy, and I think that disconnect has really been pretty openly seen here this session.”

What about funding for mass transit and other transportation projects — a constant need in Northern Virginia? Not much there either, Taylor said — with one exception. One successful bill would expand the types of projects eligible for funding from the commonwealth’s Transit Ridership Incentive Program to include projects that make transit more accessible and projects having to do with the transition to electric-powered bus fleets and infrastructure.

Taylor said Alexandria had one small but important win: the city received approval from the General Assembly to run its own health department, something its neighbors in Arlington County and Fairfax County already do (in Virginia, most local health departments are operated by the commonwealth’s health department, not the localities they serve).

Legislating in the margins

So statewide, what did get through the partisan political buzzsaw? Lawmakers did a lot of legislating in the margins of bigger issues: the General Assembly again failed to pass a framework for setting up a cannabis marketplace, but it did introduce tougher restrictions on certain hemp products, and it pushed responsibility for overseeing medical cannabis to the state’s Cannabis Control Authority.

There were no big changes to gun laws — but lawmakers did manage to agree on a bill that would offer tax credit incentives for gun owners to purchase safes for their firearms, and another to allow an exemption from a photo ID requirement in gun background checks for Amish and Old Order Mennonite people. And while the partisan fight over voter access didn’t go much of anywhere, the legislature did replace the requirement that absentee voters have a witness signature on their ballot envelope with a requirement that they provide their birthday and the last four digits of their Social Security number, or the unique number assigned to them in the Virginia voter system.

The Youngkin administration has publicly celebrated the passage of a few bills, including a measure that adopts the definition of anti-Semitism put out by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a step recommended by the commonwealth’s Commission to Combat Antisemitism. The administration also highlighted a bill that will consolidate state workforce development programs under a single state agency, the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement.

“I’m pleased with the efforts we’ve made to protect Virginia farmland from our foreign adversaries, reform occupational licensing to expand worker freedom, realign our workforce development pipeline, bolster school resource officers, make a strong stand against anti-Semitism, and take care of our veterans. I stand ready to work with the general assembly as we finalize a budget,” Youngkin said in a statement on the legislature’s adjournment.

Both sides of the aisle said they were pleased with the passage of new rules for electric utility regulation. The measure will set Dominion Energy’s profit margin for two years, and then allow the State Corporation Commission to do so moving forward. It also adds limits to the percentage of excess earnings Dominion is allowed to keep. The bill increases the cadence of reviews of utility rates from every three years to every two. The legislation requires Dominion to include special project-related charges in customers’ base rates, and it will allow Dominion to issue bonds to pay for fuel costs, which could have the effect of smoothing out the impact of spikes in fuel costs on customers.

Youngkin also praised the passage of a bill that streamlines the Virginia licensure process for people already licensed in certain professions in other states.

“What I hear from businesses of all sizes, large and small, is they need more, they need more workers,” Youngkin said in a statement. “Universal license recognition will assist in resolving worker shortages while at the same time benefiting consumers through reduced costs of goods and services.”

Reducing barriers for workers was an issue some Northern Virginia lawmakers identified as an area of common ground at the beginning of the session, and it was a theme of a few other bills, too. One makes it easier for regular psychologists to be employed in schools while they undergo further training for certification in school settings. Another measure would allow people who have certain crimes on their record to still become peer recovery specialists.

In the wake of a deadly on-campus shooting at the University of Virginia in November, the legislature updated the expectations and notification requirements for university threat-assessment teams.

As for the rest, well: the list of bills headed to Youngkin’s desk is a real grab-bag. It includes: a bill that sets minimum staffing standards for nursing homes; a bill that prevents employers from using nondisclosure agreements to prevent employees from speaking up about sexual harassment; a bill that toughens penalties for manufacturers and distributors of fentanyl and defines the substance as a “weapon of terrorism”; a measure replacing “handicapped” and similarly outdated terms related to people with disabilities in state code, plus a bill requiring employers to pay employees with disabilities the state minimum wage; a bill that creates a dedicated stream of funding from the Commonwealth Mass Transit Fund for the Virginia Railway Express, and also imposes a 50% cap on the state contribution to Metro; legislation allowing licensed midwives to administer drugs in patient care; a bill that prevents towing operators from refusing people access to person possessions in a towed car for failure to pay the towing fee; and a bill that expands the Virginia Literacy Act, passed last year, to apply to students in grades 4-8.

Under another measure, schools will be required to notify parents within a day if their child is involved in a bullying incident or has otherwise seriously violated school policy. Another bill clarifies that threatening a healthcare provider is still a crime, even if it happens off of clinic or hospital property. Two bills streamline the application process for SNAP benefits.

The legislature also established a whole raft of work groups and studies to report back on various issues, from electronic healthcare records and prescription management systems to ticks to maternal mortality rates.

Also, who could forget the Chincoteague ponies, who, should the governor sign the bill, will become the official pony of Virginia? Or the importance of native plants (which are, granted, not charismatic megafauna, but are still pretty cool)?

An ongoing budget battle 

It wouldn’t be a Virginia legislative session without an important but mysterious budget process, and this year was no different. Each year, a select group of House and Senate leaders meet behind closed doors to hash out the differences between the two budget bills — and then, sooner or later, emerge with a finished product.

This year, it’ll be later, if at all. Virginia runs on a two-year budget which passed last year, so this year’s legislation would be amending the current budget. If the two sides don’t reach a compromise, the budget from last year will stand with no edits. That would leave the commonwealth’s roughly $3 billion surplus unspent.

Currently, the biggest disagreement between the two chambers is over Youngkin’s proposal to add an additional $1 billion in tax cuts to the previous $4 billion the legislature enacted last year. A proposed corporate tax cut from Youngkin drew particular ire from Democrats, who pointed out that the cut would make the corporate tax rate lower than the individual tax rate.

In the meantime, with the General Assembly officially adjourned, lawmakers will head home to their districts, and shift into campaign mode in anticipation of primaries in June and the general election in November. With all seats in both houses of the General Assembly up before voters, the election will be a battle for control of both narrowly divided chambers.

The end of this legislative session and the transition to campaign season has brought with it a spate of announcements of retirements and resignations, including of two of the General Assembly’s longest-serving legislators. State Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, a Democrat who has represented parts of Fairfax County in the body for nearly five decades, will retire in January 2024. So will Ken Plum, also a Democrat, who has represented the Reston area for over four decades.

And with several current lawmakers being forced to run against each other in redrawn legislative districts, and some House of Delegates members planning to run for state Senate seats, the General Assembly will look quite different when the next regular session comes around in January.

“It is a huge loss of institutional knowledge,” Taylor said. “It’s going to be a completely different General Assembly next year. And I’m really interested to see how it all plays out.”