In the final day for the House and Senate to act on their own
bills, we lost two battles and won two.
We will be working to kill these two bills in the Senate after Crossover, midnight tonight.
Our wins were a bit anticlimactic, as both bills were pulled by
their sponsors. Delegate Lingamfelter,
apparently aware that he did not have the votes, re-referred his Charter School
bill, HB565, to the House Education Committee which will not meet again before Crossover. This bill had been defeated
yesterday, but was back before the House for reconsideration. I imagine that Lingamfelter will seek to conform Senator Obenshains SB734 to his bill. SB734 passed the Senate yesterday on a 21-Y 19-N party-line vote. SB734 is the last chance to rewrite the charter sections of the Code in this session.
Finally, in the Senate, where the Republicans were without their
majority for a day due to the absence of Senator Newman, Senator Obenshain
pulled SB737, his bill to deny teachers, police and firefighters their ability
to take leave for lobbying, conferences, conventions and other reasons.
The last chance to give the Virginia Board of Education the power
to override local school boards by approving charter schools is the passage of
H.J.R. 1 in the Senate after Crossover. This resolution
will next be considered in the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee.
Our goal will be to kill the bill in Committee.
Regular readers will understand when I say that for the first half
of the 2016 session, Senators Chafin and Hanger are the Profiles in Courage
Award nominees. Not the first time for
Hanger. VEA is very lucky to have
friends on both sides of the aisle.
