By Trevor Moncure
Commonwealth Strategy Group
On February 22nd, the Virginia General Assembly officially concluded its work for the 2025 regular session. Legislators returned on April 2nd to vote on Governor Youngkin’s bill amendments and address his vetoed legislation. Thankfully, all of PSV and WPS’s priority bills were approved.
With the 2025 Legislative Session officially behind us, legislators will now hit the campaign trail. All 100 seats of the House of Delegates will be up for election, and Virginia will elect a new Governor as Glenn Youngkin’s term comes to an end. The two front runners for party nominees in the gubernatorial race remain as Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger (D) and Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears (R).
Below is a list of bills and budget items that PSV/WPS worked on this session:
Bills
SB 752
As mentioned previously, Senator Favola’s (D-Arlington) prescriptive authority study bill passed through both chambers unanimously. This was not unexpected as it faced no challenges in either subcommittee. PSV/WPS worked to amend the language of this workgroup to include more concise membership qualifications.
The Governor signed this bill into law. The first meetings of this workgroup are expected to begin in April or May.
SB 1064
Senator Hashmi’s (D-Richmond) COPN reform bill involving applications for additional psychiatric beds and a new psychiatric care facility passed through both chambers unanimously and received the Governor’s signature. PSV and WPS publicly supported this legislation.
HB 2269/SB 1260
Delegate Tran (D-Fairfax) and Senator Aird (D-Petersburg) carried legislation this year requiring hospitals in the Commonwealth to establish a workplace violence incident reporting system to document, track, and analyze any incident of workplace violence reported. Both the House and Senate versions of this legislation passed each chamber unanimously and received the Governor’s signature. PSV and WPS publicly supported this legislation.
SB 1038
Senator Pekarsky’s (D-Fairfax) legislation establishing a workgroup to study best practice guidelines for telehealth visits with patients with disabilities also passed both chambers unanimously and awaits the Governor’s signature. PSV and WPS publicly supported this legislation and look forward to participating in the workgroup. Governor Youngkin signed this bill into law.
Budget Amendments
Item 285#2h
Delegate Willett’s (D-Henrico) budget amendment replacing the burdensome medication management plan requirement language with a workgroup on behavioral health medication management practices was included in the House and Senate joint budget amendments.
Item 296#4h and Item 296#2s
Unfortunately, only $750,000 was included in the final draft of budget amendments as additional allocations to the Adult Psychiatric Access Line. This is obviously well short of the additional $3 million that we were asking for originally. However, given the fact that APAL is a newer project, it is beneficial to bring attention to this critical program.
As always, please reach out to [email protected] with any additional questions on legislative activity.
Make sure to make a donation to PsychMD-PAC if you have not done so already: https://www2.psva.org/forms/PsychMD-PAC.iphtml
