Updates on VCN Priorities
Virginia Clean Economy Act (HB1526/SB851). Another hurdle was cleared for the VCEA when HB1526 made it out of Thursday night’s House Labor and Commerce Committee. The bill will now head to the House floor. SB851 will come up in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee on Sunday. There’s still time to reach out to the senators on the committee and tell them to help pass meaningful climate legislation. Many members of the conservation community have been working around the clock on substitute language to help to ensure the strongest climate action possible.
ACTION: Reach out to Senate Labor and Commerce committee members before Sunday and tell them to ensure SB851 is the strongest climate action possible.
Electric school buses are one wheel rotation closer (HB75). One of the big causes of gridlock for advancing an electric school bus bill has been the topic of leasing the buses – particularly when it comes to schools in lower-income districts. The preferred bill to fix this issue, HB75, reported from the Labor and Commerce committee and will now head to the House floor. Currently, Virginia has 17,000 school buses and studies have shown the level of diesel exhaust within a school bus can reach six times the levels found outside the bus. Electrifying the fleet would result in avoiding more than 144,000 tons of carbon emissions each year – the equivalent of taking 27,851 cars off the road.
Ensuring healthy farms and healthy waters (HB1422/SB704). Virginia’s ambitious goals to clean up the Chesapeake Bay by 2025 and restore the Commonwealth’s rivers and streams will be a big topic every General Assembly. The agricultural sector has made progress, but we need to accelerate these efforts to achieve our clean-up goals. Two of the most important initiatives in the plan to reduce pollution from agriculture are fencing cattle from perennial streams and ensuring farms operate under a nutrient management plan. HB1422 and SB704 set deadlines for fencing cattle from perennial streams (if the overall goals of Virginia’s cleanup plan are not met) and implementing Nutrient Management Plans on cropland. This bill requires landowners with more than 20 head of cattle to fence them out of waterways and requires operators of 50 cropland acres or more to implement a nutrient management plan. Earlier this week, the VCN board took a position on stream exclusion bills HB1422/SB704. VCN and its network of partners have been working closely with the administration to add meaningful improvements to the bills, however, and several amendments were made to the bills in committee. Our Network Partners are currently reviewing the substitutes closely, and we will continue to monitor. The bills are currently in each chamber’s Appropriations committee. No matter what, the most important aspect is ensuring full funding for VAs Ag Cost Share program for farmers to meet the goals of the program – VCN will be working to support the budget amendments to reach the full needs assessment.
Update on Codifying the Virginia Council on Environmental Justice (HB1042/SB883). Both Environmental Justice Council bills have it made if out of their chambers!
VCN budget memo now available. We’re super excited about the Governor’s proposed budget and the $733 million for natural resources. A lot of other organizations were excited when it was released, too. Before the House and Senate announce their proposed budgets, we want to ensure that the best amendments stay and the bad ones go. You can find VCN’s memo on budget amendments here. The positions were put forward by the legislative committee and approved by VCN’s board today.
Bill Positions
Virginia Conservation Network publishes bill positions every week. These positions have been voted on by our Legislative Committee, comprised of leading environmental organizations in the state, and our board of directors. They are intended to reflect the positions of the broader conservation community and are updated every Friday.
To view this table online with talking points, visit vcnva.org/bill-tracker.