Early Morning at Breaks Interstate Park. Image Credit – David Petersen

The General Assembly will reconvene for a special session on Monday, April 4th to adopt procedural resolutions, finalize the biennial budget, and make decisions on a handful of remaining bills. Legislators are not expected to have a budget ready and will likely meet again for a final vote once a budget agreement is ready. VCN encourages partners to continue to reach out to budget conference committee members on their priorities. You can use VCN’s Budget Memo as a guide.

5 Things to look out for this special session:

1) Gas Tax Suspension

On Wednesday, March 16th, Governor Youngkin announced his plan to propose emergency legislation during the special session to suspend the state gas tax for three months, pending General Assembly approval. 

The fact of the matter is that a gas tax suspension won’t actually lower gas prices or help Virginians save money. Instead, a gas tax suspension will drastically cut public transit and rail funding – services Virginians need now more than ever. The suspension will hit lower-income Virginians the hardest, who often lack access to a car and more often utilize the public transit that will be directly impacted by this proposed suspension. VCN and our Partners will be advocating to maintain our transportation funding during the special session.You can read more about the effects of a gas tax suspension on Virginians in our Roundup here.

2) Keeping RGGI out of the Budget

This session the conservation community successfully defeated a series of bills which would repeal or undermine Virginia’s participation in RGGI and strip funding for families to ensure flood resiliency and energy efficiency in homes. However, that has not stopped the Governor from attempting to legislate RGGI through state agencies and the budget. Most recently, Governor Youngkin released a Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative report which provided a cherry-picked analysis to support Youngkin’s partisan effort to repeal Virginia’s participation in RGGI. 

At the end of the day, RGGI cannot be repealed through executive action or regulation. Virginia’s participation in RGGI is required by law – passed in the 2021 General Assembly session and re-confirmed this session with the defeat of many RGGI repeal bills. Regardless, VCN and our Partners will be opposing any budget amendments that affect RGGI this special session.

3) Styrofoam Ban Deadline

Last year, VCN and our Partners successfully passed legislation to diminish plastic pollution. The expanded polystyrene (aka EPS and styrofoam) ban prohibits food vendors from using single-use expanded polystyrene, or styrofoam, as food service containers. To allow plenty of time for adjustment, certain chain restaurants have until July 1, 2023 to stop EPS use, and all other food vendors have until July 1, 2025. The legislation also provides a process to receive one-year exemptions for food vendors facing economic hardship.

Despite the generous timeline for food vendors to adjust to the new law, both the House and Senate proposed budget amendments to delay the ban by another two years. VCN and our Partners are working with legislators to remove these amendments and will provide an update on the expanded polystyrene ban once the budget is finalized.

4) Clean Water Funding

Governor Northam’s outgoing budget allotted $1 billion to meet Virginia’s 2025 deadline to restore the Chesapeake Bay. The funding will go to many programs supporting the clean up of the Chesapeake Bay, such as full funding for Virginia’s Agricultural Cost Share Program, increased funding for the Farmland Preservation Fund, and full funding for the Virginia Natural Resources Commitment Fund, which will assist farmers and landowners to implement clean water and conservation practices.

Both the House and Senate nearly matched the Governor’s proposal for clean water finding. We will be watching the finalized budget for full funding for our Chesapeake Bay cleanup goals. 

5) Land Conservation and Trails Funding

Governor Northam also dedicated an historic amount of funding for outdoor recreation and trails in his outgoing budget. Of that budget, $233 million is dedicated to multi-use trails to develop, expand, and/or improve regional trails. Northam also granted Virginia’s award-winning state parks nearly $70 million for maintenance, infrastructure, and facility development, with another $1.4 million dedicated to increase access to state parks and forests.

Unfortunately, both the House and Senate budget proposals cut much of Northam’s proposals for land conservation and multi-use trails. VCN and our Partners will evaluate the final budget and report how much funding Virginia’s outdoor recreation receives. 

General Assembly Policy Review

This past session, VCN tracked over 200 pieces of legislation and advocated a position on 122 bills. This year, changes in state leadership kept the conservation community on the defensive as we fought to protect our clean energy and climate policy progress that we have made over the last few years. VCN opposed 32 pieces of legislation, and thanks to the highly-coordinated, strong advocacy from our Partners we are proud to see 29 of those opposed bills defeated. Despite the increased opposition compared to previous several years, VCN and our partners continued to advocate and support the development of strong conservation policy. Of the 80 bills which VCN supported, 33 bills are headed to the Governor’s desk to be signed into law! You can see the status of all of VCN’s tracked legislation and the policy outcomes on our Bill Tracker.

You can see the outcomes of the key policies from each our conservation issue areas in our Review of the General Assembly Session below: