The General Assembly continues at a quick pace even after the mid-point of Session, commonly known as Crossover Day, at which point all House Bills have to be only considered in the Senate, and vice versa. This year, we lost a few crucial days at the beginning of Session due to the Richmond water crisis, and we have been working at a furious pace since to try to get the hundreds of introduced bills heard and voted upon.
VRLTA’s pro-active bills this year have not survived. HB1654 and SB985, the expansion of the human trafficking prevention training requirement, from Senator Williams-Graves and Delegate Helmer did not pass their Chambers of origin, but there have been several lessons learned in the process, and the concept will be back next year more ready for passage, so stay tuned.
VRLTA is also engaged on some other bills, most notably SB1133 from Senator Boysko of Fairfax County, which would establish a burdensome new labeling requirement of pork and pork-derived products on menus. While Senator Boysko is motivated to help the communities of faith that she represents, this bill constitutes a significant cost burden on restaurants and a potential “gotcha” game with customers, because so many pork-derived products are upstream in the food production process that a restaurant operator may not be able to determine. There are examples like gelatin, which is often but not always derived from pork bones, enzymes used in cheese production, cysteine used in industrial baking, and those are just a few. We are also monitoring SB1350 from Senator Srinivasan, which deals with notices from restaurants to customers with food allergies, amongst others.
We continue to advocate in the Budget for multiple priorities, including a pushing back of the effective dates for Virginia’s polystyrene container ban. The Governor’s Budget established July 1, 2028 and July 1, 2030 for larger and smaller operators respectively. But the House and Senate Budgets both set those dates forward to July 1, 2025 and July 1, 2026 respectively. This sets up a conflict between the legislature and the Governor during budget negotiations, and we are pushing hard for the Governor’s dates to win out.
We also continue to work with our Tourism members and the overall team at Virginia Tourism to push forward HB1901 and SB927, as well as the associated Budget language for the Virginia Sports Tourism Grant Fund, which will hopefully dedicate $5 million of matching funds for localities to access as they attempt to further attract youth and amateur sports events to the Commonwealth. An ARPA-funded pilot of this type was a resounding success with $1 million in funding, and we are hopeful that it will be included in the final Budget at the end of Session.
We are also monitoring and pursuing amendments on other bills, like the new version of Senator Pekarsky’s SB1212 and Delegate McClure’s HB2515, which deal with transparency in surcharges. VRLTA was able to put forward amendments last year that are reflected in this year’s bill, protecting a business’ ability to transparently use the auto-gratuity system, and to protect the charges related to Tourism Improvement District funding. We are also engaging on issues like energy choice and affordability, franchising issues, amongst others.
If you have questions about any legislative topics, please make sure to reach out to Tommy Herbert, VRLTA’s Director of Government Affairs at Tommy@VRLTA.org.