League Celebrates a Win During Reconvene Session, but Commonwealth Remains Without Budget

Last Wednesday, April 17th, the Virginia General Assembly held its Reconvene Session, also known as the veto session. Each year, the Virginia General Assembly reconvenes in April to act upon the Governor’s amendments and vetoes to legislation the House and Senate Passed during the regular session. During the 2024 General Assembly Session 1,046 bills made it through both the House and Senate Chambers to the Governor’s desk. The Governor has four options regarding the legislation that comes before him:

1. Sign the bill as passed into law – The bill goes into law on July 1st unless otherwise stated in the legislation.
2. Veto the entire bill – The House and Senate have the chance to override during reconvene session. If overridden the bill becomes law, if not overridden the bill is dead.
3. Amend all or portions of the bill - The House and Senate have the chance to either approve or reject some or all the amendments. If amendments are approved the bill as amended becomes law. If not approved, the Governor can either sign or veto the bill without their amendments. The House and Senate can not override a veto at this step.
4. Take no action – The bill goes into law on July 1st unless otherwise stated in the legislation.

Between the end of the 2024 General Assembly Session in March and April 8th Governor Youngkin signed 777 bills into law, amended 116, and vetoed 153. This year alone, Governor Youngkin has vetoed more bills than any of his seven immediate predecessors did over their entire four-year terms. No attempts were made by the House or Senate to override any of the Governor’s vetoes. However, several of the Governor’s amendments were not adopted and will once again be acted on by the Governor.

The most substantial development from the Reconvened Session is that the House and Senate unanimously voted that Governor Glenn Youngkin’s 233 budget amendments were “not specific and severable” and passed the budget bills by for the day. This motion essentially killed the current budget, preventing a veto from the Governor and forcing the Governor to call a special session prior to June 30th, 2024. The Governor was aware this procedure would be used and had agreed to go back to the negotiating table with House and Senate leaders and draft a compromise budget. Governor Youngkin called a special General Assembly session to take place beginning on May 13th.

As mentioned previously, the League has been working on HB184 which was passed during the regular session. This bill requires subordinate mortgage lienholders that initiate a foreclosure sale to submit an affidavit affirming whether monthly statements were sent to a property owner. After crossover, the bill was amended in the Senate to require some additional requirements. However, we were able to work the patron to secure an exception to the bill’s requirements for both initial creditors and for credit unions. Due to a drafting change to the bill by Legislative Services, the exemption language only applied to state-chartered credit unions, not to federally chartered credit unions. League staff engaged with the Governor’s office to ask him to amend the bill to include the full exemption as we had proposed it, for both federally and state-chartered credit unions. The Governor agreed, and this bill is one that he amended. The bill went back to the General Assembly during the Reconvene Session, where the governor’s amendment was passed unanimously by both the House and Senate.

VACUL will be watching the upcoming special session closely to ensure there are no changes to the budget which could have the potential of harming credit unions or our ability to serve those in the Commonwealth.