While every session is a little different, the 2025 General Assembly session is off to a more complicated start than usual. The City of Richmond has been dealing with water issues since the beginning of the week when they experienced a power outage from the winter storm that hit Sunday and Monday. Subsequently, various pieces of the City water system failed, leaving most everyone across the City without water and/or under a boil water advisory until at least Friday. Most of the traditional pre-Session receptions and Caucus events on Monday and Tuesday were canceled.
The lack of water throughout the city has meant a shutdown of all state office buildings, including the Capitol and the General Assembly Building. The GAB also experienced a failure of its fire suppression system on Tuesday. As a result, the 2025 General Assembly Session gaveled in at noon today, as constitutionally required, and then recessed until Monday morning.
Bill filing deadlines and budget amendment deadlines are being pushed until early next week, although we still expect to see a large number of bills filed today and on the system in the near future. We will be sending weekly reports/bill tracking reports as normal on Friday, even though we may not see some bills on the system until next week. As of this morning, there are 959 pieces of legislation that have been introduced for the 2025 Session. However, that number will quickly grow as bills continue to hit the system.
The Governor’s State of the Commonwealth address will occur at 10:00 a.m. in the House of Delegates Chamber on Monday. After that, we expect the business of the 2025 Session to begin in earnest with subcommittee and full committee meetings throughout the week. With the delay of the first week, there is a real possibility that the General Assembly will have to meet on weekends as we get closer to crossover.
Special elections were held to fill two Senate seats and one House seat in the Virginia General Assembly. We are waiting for certification by the Virginia Department of Elections, but at this time, results show Republican Luther Cifers receiving 58.73% of the votes for Senate District 10 and Democrat Kannan Srinivasan receiving 61.25% of the votes for Senate District 32. Democrat JJ Singh received 61.59% of the votes for the House of Delegates 26th District. This will maintain the status quo in both houses.
Virginia Retail Federation and The Two Capitols Consulting team will continue to keep you up-to-date about important actions and news that arise across the Commonwealth. Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out.
