This marks the final week of the 2022 General Assembly session, with a scheduled adjournment for this Saturday, March 12th.  There are a number of important pieces of legislation to be resolved in the final days, most notably the new biennial budget.  The House and Senate budget negotiators are now meeting to resolve the differences between the chambers’ competing spending plans, and most observers believe it is possible that the work on the budget will continue beyond this Saturday’s deadline. The legislature also still needs to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court and one at the State Corporation Commission.  Committees have now completed their work and so the remaining business will be handled on the floor of the House and Senate, except for conference committees that will negotiate differences in approaches to legislation between the two chambers.  

In the past week, the House and Senate have acted on a number of bills that we are following:

Both chambers have now approved legislation (SB703/HB1304) to revive the Information Technology Advisory Council, and the only remaining difference is the number of legislative members that each chamber will get on the council.  The Senate prefers the legislators from each body, while the House prefers four Delegates and two Senators.

Both chambers have approved legislation to update the duties of the STEM Education Advisory Board, though there are minor technical differences between the two approaches. The legislation will get ironed out in a conference committee this week.

Legislation to provide uniformity in the local taxation of data centers has passed the General Assembly and gone to the governor for his approval. The governor indicated his support for the legislation during the session. 

Legislation to require public bodies to report to the state CIO all known incidents of security threats to the Commonwealth’s data or communications has passed the General Assembly and gone to the governor for his approval. 

Both the House and Senate budgets provide significant new funding for IT improvements, especially in the area of cybersecurity.  Both budgets significantly increase funding for the Innovative Internship Program, which was initially created with rvatech support in a prior legislative session. Click here to view a full list of House and Senate budget items that we are following. The final budget agreement is not expected to be done in time for the scheduled adjournment on Saturday, so House and Senate members will likely return to Richmond next week or soon thereafter to vote on a final budget to send to the governor.  

Click here to view the latest on all bills that we are tracking, and please let us know if you have any questions.