RICHMOND — Crossover was this past week in the General Assembly, the day when each house must complete work on its own bills and either send them down the hall or dispose of them.
The Peninsula’s three senators, as is almost always the case, met with some frustration during the first segment of the session, but also scored some surprising successes. Here’s a look at how legislation the three sponsored has fared. (A roundup of legislative successes and losses for the area’s House of Delegates members appeared yesterday and is available online at dailypress.com/politics.)
Thomas K. “Tommy” Norment, R-James City County
This has been an unusual session for the Senate majority leader.
Pre-session he had to cope with an insurrection within his caucus, where some Republicans questioned his desire to serve as both majority leader and chairman of the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee. He ended up co-chairman.
He kicked the press off the Senate floor on the session’s first day, but soon relented. He returned reporters to the floor, giving them chairs equipped with tray tables instead of the full tables that once graced the chamber.
He tried to exacerbate a schism in the Democratic caucus by convincing state Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, to support the GOP candidate for the state Supreme Court and break a deadlock on the issue. Lucas flipped, then flipped back, and in telling the story of her displeasure with fellow Senate Democrats, she told about the time she shouted Norment down in an anteroom near the Senate chamber.
“You keep your little, narrow white ass, little J.C. Penney-little-boys’-department-wearing-suits out of my [expletive] face,” Lucas said she told him.
Norment denied the story, but it became an instant punchline nevertheless.
Legislatively, Norment has seen his usual success on a number of measures. He’s a main sponsor for GO Virginia, a new economic grants program with wide bipartisan and business community support. He’s carried legislation to allow more grandfathering of health policies that don’t fully comply with the Affordable Care Act, an extension on tax breaks for oil and gas drillers and a study into the benefits of pre-kindergarten education — which Democrats want to vastly expand — that could set the stage for future reforms.
Norment has great power over the state budget, and the House and Senate will roll out their versions of the state’s two-year spending plan Sunday. He has a number of budget amendments queued up, to start planning for construction of a new performing arts building at the College of William and Mary, where he teaches, to build a new complex at Thomas Nelson Community College and to plan for renovations at his alma mater, Virginia Military Institute.
He has backed staff funding increases for his office and for fellow Senate leaders to bring them more in line with the leadership budget in the House.
He’s taken a couple of losses on the Senate floor, though. His bill to end the requirement that foreclosure notices be published in local newspapers, which would have cost the industry millions, died on a 17-20 vote. Two Republicans voted against him in an otherwise party-line vote. Two more GOP senators — Tom Garrett and Bill Stanley — were off the floor when the vote was taken, returning shortly after.
Senators not on the floor don’t have to vote. Both Garrett and Stanley were among the Republicans who questioned Norment’s consolidation of power pre-session.
Norment was also unable to block legislation from Airbnb.com, a website that lets people rent their homes, or just rooms, to travelers. The legislation would limit the way localities can regulate this practice, and local governments around the state — including Norment’s home James City County — are against the bill.
The measure would also set up a way for the company to work with the state to remit lodging taxes, but it wouldn’t require the company to do so. Norment tried to make that mandatory and to kill the bill outright, but fell a few votes shy despite leading the Senate’s 21-19 Republican majority.
Norment declined, through spokesman Jeff Ryer, to comment for this article, something he often does. Ryer said Norment is “very happy” with the session thus far.
Ryer said this session was the first time the newspaper/foreclosure bill has made it through committee and onto the floor of either the House or Senate. He said Norment is “encouraged” by the coming budget, and that he won more votes than expected against the Airbnb bill.
“I was stunned we were able to get as close as we were,” Ryer said.
Mamie Locke, D-Hampton
Like a lot of Democrats, state Sen. Mamie Locke spends a good bit of her time each session on mathematical improbabilities.
With Republicans holding a one-seat advantage in the Senate, and a 32-seat advantage in the House, her annual effort to repeal Virginia’s pre-abortion ultrasound law just didn’t stand a chance. Neither did her effort to make insurance companies cover 12 months of birth control at a time.
Both went down on party-line committee votes. Her pair of bills to limit the interest charged on payday loans to a maximum annual rate of 36 percent was shot down, too. That’s another perennial loser in the General Assembly, and a perennial priority for Hampton Roads legislators of both parties.
Locke lost out, too, on a proposed plastic bag ban option for localities, a bill she had in common with Del. Gordon Helsel, R-Poquoson. Republicans agreed to continue until next year her proposal to change the state constitution and remove its gay marriage ban, which the U.S. Supreme Court left moot when it legalized same-sex marriages last year.
Based on the way the House of Delegates voted on other gay rights issues this year, though, Locke’s amendment does not face good odds next year.
Locke found success with legislation that would let localities crack down on drivers who go too fast through flooded areas and wash water into homes or vehicles, causing damage. That bill went through the Senate 26-14, and the House has already signed off on the concept by voting for nearly identical legislation from Helsel.
Locke’s bill to lower administrative fees charged by highway tolling companies was killed off, but the concept remains part of a larger battle over transportation funding that may not be resolved until the end of session. The House has omnibus legislation that includes a number of limits on toll charges.
The senator’s effort to toughen the penalty for verbal threats, making it a felony on par with written threats instead of a misdemeanor, was left in committee. Her bill to put a portion of the state’s real estate recordation tax into the Virginia Housing Trust Fund, which has a $4 million annual budget and helps provide affordable housing, was continued until 2017, delaying any final decision.
John Miller, D-Newport News
This has been the most fruitful session of Miller’s eight years in office, he said, including times when Democrats controlled the Senate.
His bill to require 20 minutes of physical activity each day in elementary school not only got through the Senate this year, it moved through the House on Friday, albeit in a slightly different form. That’s likely to be worked out, bringing final passage after six years of trying.
The senator is also carrying a long set of high-school reforms backed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe. The bill is moving quickly through both chambers and would require the State Board of Education to overhaul the high school curriculum, placing more emphasis on career training and granting class credit for things like apprenticeships.
He also got the Senate to approve a ban, starting July 1, 2018, on touch-screen voting systems. It awaits action in the House.
His call for a voter referendum on independent redistricting passed the Senate again this year, but this wouldn’t be the first year the bill has died in the House.
Miller’s annual effort to expand no-excuse early voting for senior citizens also passed the Senate again this session, but was quickly tabled in the House. His payday loan interest cap legislation was rolled into Locke’s similar effort and killed in the Senate.
Miller’s effort to add e-cigarettes to Virginia’s indoor smoking ban was also killed in Senate committee. Ditto his attempt to require a multimodal component on any new bridge or tunnel built in Hampton Roads, as well as his bill to require the state to study the effect of sea level rise on all new highway projects there.
His routine effort to change the constitution to allow governors to run for a second term was carried over to next year, as many proposed constitutional amendments have been. Past results do not bode well for the measure.
A Miller bill to continue shrinking the number of Standards of Learning tests given each year was also carried over. His proposal would eliminate as many as 12 tests, leaving 17.
Fain can be reached by phone at 757-525-1759.
