Students from Tandem Friends School meet with lawmakers to learn about Virginia’s legislative process at Conservation Lobby Day.

The Virginia Conservation Network tracked over 300 pieces of legislation and took a position on 118 bills this session. To see the status of all of VCN’s tracked legislation and the policy outcomes, see our updated Bill Tracker.

VCN took a position on 11 bills that affects an equitable & inclusive state government, supporting 8 bills to ensure good governance of the Commonwealth and opposing 3 bills.  For better and for worse, all of these bills were defeated in the 2023 General Assembly session. See the legislation and talking points for these bills in our Good Governance Policy Bill Tracker below.

Beneficial state regulations are intentionally developed over a period of time to allow for  stakeholder participation and a transparent process. This session, our Partners successfully defeated bills that would have thrown our environment’s regulatory protections out the window. The defeated bills would have created the Virginia Regulatory Sandbox Program within the Administration’s Department of Planning and Budget. This Program would have allowed individuals or businesses to be exempt from nearly any law, regulation, or certification for up to 2.5 years in order to demonstrate a product, production method, or service.

The health of our communities, kids, and environment relies upon such laws, regulations, and permits to ensure safety, health, consumer, and natural resource protections. Thank you to legislators and our Partners at SELC for preserving and upholding the integrity of meaningful environmental health standards.

Our supported bills to further progress to ensure good governance of Virginia were defeated this session. VCN and our Partners pursued legislation to establish and support environmental literacy plans for students, allow localities to adopt environmental health strategies into their comprehensive plans, and ban the use of political campaign funds for personal use.

Thank you to our Partners at the Virginia Association for Environmental Education, Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, and Clean Virginia for your leadership on these issues – we’ll be back at it next year!

Students at the Tandem Friends School learn about Virginia’s legislative process at Conservation Lobby Day

See policy reviews for our other issues areas from the 2023 General Assembly session below: