Today we begin with a civics lesson.
This is required if you’re going to understand the action that will blow up in the General Assembly on Wednesday — and perhaps beyond.
The essential point here is that Richmond does not work the way Washington does. Most of the time, that’s a good thing. This may be a good thing, too, depending on your point of view.
Let’s go back to what we learned in school about how a bill becomes law. In Washington, Congress can pass a bill, and then the president has either two choices: to sign it into law, or to veto it, and then Congress has a chance to override that veto with a two-thirds votes in both chambers.
Richmond works somewhat differently, because a Virginia governor has a third option — he (or maybe someday she) can send the measure back to the legislature with amendments. That’s what’s happened in the case of the budget, the skill game bill and lots of others.
On Wednesday, the General Assembly will reconvene for what’s popularly called “the veto session” but is more formally called “the reconvened session.” At that time, the legislature will vote on whether to override the governor’s vetoes — to the best of anyone’s knowledge, that’s only happened twice in modern times. There will be some drama on at least one vote — the veto of the bill to allow localities to hold referendums on whether to raise the sales tax for school construction — but most of the action will be on those amendments. There will be more going on than simply whether the legislature agrees with the governor’s amendments. What will really be going on is a game of chicken. That’s because Virginia has an avenue of options that the federal government doesn’t have.
If the legislature approves the governor’s amendments, then the bill — whatever it is — goes back to the governor, when he presumably signs it. However, if the legislature rejects the governor’s amendments, then the original bill goes back to the governor. He then faces a choice: sign a bill that he thought was flawed, or veto it — and at that point, the legislature has no opportunity to override the veto.
Many gubernatorial amendments are simply of a housekeeping nature — glorified copy editing to clean up things in a bill that got missed in the rush of legislating. Those aren’t the ones at issue. The drama will come on more substantive amendments — again, such as those skill game amendments that amounted to a wholesale rewrite of the bill. With any substantive amendment, a Virginia governor is implicitly saying, “If you don’t accept this amendment, I might veto this bill, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.” And any time the legislature rejects one of those substantive amendments, it’s saying right back to the governor, “We dare you to veto this bill.” There’s some brinkmanship going on both ways.
Much of the time, this can all be worked out somewhat amicably. This time, though, we have two sides who are digging in: a Republican governor who sees the world one way and a Democratic legislature that sees it another. That makes the situation ripe for misunderstandings and conflict — or perhaps even intentional conflict. Many Democrats are already looking past Youngkin’s term and aren’t particularly afraid of a veto — some may think a veto of some prized bill will help them whip up their base in the 2025 governor’s race. Youngkin, for his part, may think the same, the Horatius at the bridge analogy I laid out last week.
That means what happens Wednesday — and the word is this session could drag on for multiple days — isn’t really the end of things. As Winston Churchill once said early in World War II, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” If the legislature rejects a bunch of Youngkin’s amendments — and on some things, the Democratic majority surely will — then we enter another phase of waiting to see what the governor’s response is.
Let’s walk through the three big things we’ll be watching:
The state budget
This is the big one. Youngkin has proposed 233 amendments. Democrats seem in no mood to compromise. Youngkin has already given up on his big goal: tax cuts. But what happens when Democrats reject his amendments (or at least the main ones), and send back to the governor virtually the same budget they passed before, which he called “the backward budget”? Here’s where the governor has two options. He can use his line-item veto to veto certain portions of the budget — that would take things out but wouldn’t add things in, so it would be of limited utility. Democrats would howl, and Republicans would still be unsatisfied; but at least we’d have a budget. Or Youngkin could veto the whole thing, something no one can ever remember happening in Virginia. That would be dramatic, but would it be good policy? Or even good politics?
If Youngkin vetoed the budget, he would need to call a special session and send down his own proposed budget. But at that point, the Democratic majority — slim as it may be — would be further enraged, and there’s no guarantee they’d look any more favorably on that than they have his changes now. It would give Youngkin some leverage, something he currently lacks, but at what price? At that point, Wall Street would be watching — woe be to the Virginia politician who ever gets blamed for jeopardizing the state’s AAA bond rating. That is the pole star that both parties have historically looked to for guidance.
When I say the governor lacks leverage, here’s what I mean: The time for cutting a deal with a legislature may have passed. If Youngkin really wanted tax cuts — or, for that matter, an arena in Alexandria — he should have sat down with key legislators a long time ago and tried to work out a grand bargain. In theory, there was such a possibility: Youngkin would have had to accept some things he didn’t like, such as a higher minimum wage; and Democrats might have had to accept some things they didn’t like. But that’s the nature of compromises. Now, since the governor has already vetoed the things Democrats care about most, they have little incentive to do business with him — particularly the senators. His term runs out before theirs do; all 40 senators know they will outlast him. As a basketball fan, Youngkin should appreciate that there is a clock management problem here. Democrats are fine with just running out the clock and hoping the next governor will be one of their own.
Nobody really knows how the budget will wind up.
Skill games
The legislature passed a bill legalizing the games. It was hardly perfect, but both chambers passed the measure by decent margins — and this was also one of those bills where there was no partisan split. Democrats and Republicans were roughly equal on both sides of the question. Whether legalizing the electronic games is good policy or bad policy doesn’t matter; the legislature made it clear the games should come back. Youngkin said he had “major concerns” about the bill but wanted to respect the legislature’s intent — so he sent down some amendments and, goodness knows, the original bill had plenty of ways it could have been improved. However, those amendments wind up making it impossible to operate the games in all but a few places in the state. Much of the state is blocked by 35-mile exclusion zones around casinos, racetracks and the Rosie’s off-track gaming facilities; much of the rest is blocked by the 2,500-foot exclusion zones around churches, schools and day cares. You can find those maps in two of my previous columns.
The more legislators have looked at these maps, the angrier some of them have become. They see either amendments that were poorly drafted in haste, or intentionally ban almost all the games. There will be a lot of drama over these amendments, particularly the exclusion zones. We now delve into parliamentary procedure. One question that will surely arise is that of “severability.” Is this one big amendment that must be voted on, or can the different parts be “severed” and voted on separately? It would be in the governor’s interest for this to be considered as one big amendment. The Senate’s presiding officer, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, may be called upon to rule on this. Let’s assume she rules these provisions are not severable. At that point, senators could challenge that ruling — and even Democrats who oppose skill games might be inclined to vote for severability, simply to tweak the Republican lieutenant governor and the Republican governor.
What happens if the original bill or something close to it goes back to the governor? Does he then say, “Well, I tried to fix this bill but I couldn’t, so I’m forced to veto it?” If so, he’ll make a lot of Republicans unhappy — there’s a lot of support for these games among rural Republicans in particular. Case in point: One of their most vocal champions is state Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County.
Local referendums on whether to raise the sales tax for school construction
This bill — by Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, in the House and Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William County, in the Senate — passed with a significant amount of support from Republicans, specifically rural Republicans who see few other ways to raise school construction money in their localities. The measure passed 71-26 in the House, 27-12 in the Senate. The governor vetoed the bill, saying he couldn’t support a potential tax increase. Those original margins are big enough to override a gubernatorial veto, but how many Republicans will stick to their vote?
It’s one thing to vote for a bill in a vacuum; it’s another to vote to override the veto of a governor from your own party. Then it becomes a matter of party loyalty, or at least not wanting to help Democrats make your guy look bad. This is the bill to watch for a possible override. It’ll be easier to get an override in the Senate — you need fewer Republicans, and all those Republicans know they’ll be around after Youngkin is gone. It’ll be harder in the House simply because it’s more difficult to deal with a larger number of legislators who might stand up to their own governor.
The odds are there’s no override, but it’s possible that some Republicans are so mad about the skill games bill that they transfer their emotions here. I wouldn’t bet on that, but it’s possible; and I’ve heard that suggested as one outcome. Prince Edward County, which has an elementary school with a roof leaks so badly that some rooms can’t be used, has become the poster child for this bill, and I know folks in Prince Edward (a rare swing county) have been pushing Republicans hard for an override.
This is what we have to look forward to Wednesday — and beyond.