This week marks the completion of the first full week of the 2020 Virginia legislative session. Last week saw several historic firsts for the Commonwealth. Delegate Eileen Filler-Corn was sworn in as the first female Speaker of the House of Delegates as well as the first person of Jewish faith to be speaker. Delegate Charniele Herring was selected as the first female and first African American to serve as Majority Leader of the House of Delegates. In the Senate, Senator L. Louise Lucas was elected the first female and first African American to serve as President Pro Tempore of the Senate.

As of today, 1603 House bills had been introduced and another 990 Senate bills. That’s almost as many as was introduced in 2018, and members still have a few more days to introduce legislation.. though they are limited to only a few bills each after the start of session. Members had until Friday the 10th to submit amendments to the governor’s introduced budget and those will be made available by Thursday, January 16.

The legislature will spend the next eight weeks acting on the legislation introduced in their own chamber, and after February 12th they can only consider legislation approved by the other legislative body. Each chamber will adopt its own version of a new biennial budget on February 13th and work to negotiate a final agreement by the scheduled date of adjournment, March 7th.

The new innovation authority legislation that RVATech is following closely and supporting has been released. You can view the bills here SB576 and HB1017. The Talking Points and links to the status of each bill have been posted to commerce.virginia.gov/innovation.