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Weekly Legislative Reports for the 2008 Session

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VCCA Legislative Report 3/9/08

 

Despite the best efforts of many, negotiating a two-year state budget and dealing with controversial transportation legislation brought about by a Virginia Supreme Court ruling in the final days of the session proved too much for legislators, who simply ran out of time. The result was a three-day extension to allow budget negotiators more time to reach agreement on a range of issues, including differences in the total dollar amount of bonds to be used primarily to enhance services and structures at many of the state's community colleges.The House wanted a five-day extension to tackle both the budget and address the Supreme Court ruling, but both the Senate and the Governor have indicated that they prefer a special session to slug it out on transportation funding, and the Governor is expected to call that session sometime close to the mid-April Veto session when legislators are already scheduled to return to the Capitol. The session is now scheduled to adjourn on March 11th.

 

VCCA scored a major victory with the passage of SB 392 eliminating the sales tax on textbooks for our students. I have, in previous reports, detailed the history of this bill, and the failure of its companion bill - HB 1326 - earlier in this session. Assuming the Governor signs the bill, which is now headed to his desk, the purchase of textbooks by our students will no longer be subject to Virginia State Sales Tax, effective July 1, 2010.

 

Our biggest failure of the session was the inability to derail the dental lobby who pushed through legislation that restricts the training of new categories of dental assistants to schools accredited only by that profession's accreditor (CODA) and further recognizes only the credentialing of these new dental professionals by an entity also controlled by the dental professions (DANB).  While VCCA has but a few training programs that will be impacted by this new law, the precedent it sets of not recognizing national accreditors approved by the federal DOE, and other approved credentialing entities, is a bad one.

 

I have also previously addressed the passage of "diploma mill" legislation, which was a key proposal in the SCHEV legislative package at this session of the General Assembly. We did not oppose this legislation, although once is was clear that legislators were going to re-write some of its provisions we did meet with them to assist in that effort while preserving the intent of the original legislation. In the end the legislation that passed allows SCHEV to beat their chest, but will do little to prevent online and non-degree "diploma mills" from operating in Virginia.

 

There was a slew of bills placing new mental health related requirements on institutions of higher education as a result of the Virginia Tech massacre. We were successful in amending some and watching others to ensure that these new requirements, which for the most part neither fit or could be implemented by career colleges, were not applicable to our sector.

 

And finally, Governor Kaine has already signed bills that were introduced at his request (SB 252 and HB 1312) which transfer responsibility for the management of the Commonwealth's workforce development programs from the Virginia Employment Commission to the Virginia Community College System and requires that Virginia's workforce strategic plan be developed in coordination with the state's economic development strategic plan. While VCCA took no position on these bills, you will recall that I did appear before a recent meeting of the Virginia Workforce Council urging them not to forget about our sector and others who provide successful, employer-driven, career workforce training across the state.

 

This is the final VCCA Legislative Report of the 2008 Regular Session of the Virginia General Assembly. Thank you for the opportunity to once again represent your interests before the legislature. Please don't hesitate to contact me should you have any questions or require additional information about any matter contained in this report.

 
VCCA Legislative Report 3/1/08

I am happy to report that despite the best efforts of some our "friends" in the legislature, SB 392 (sales tax on textbooks) has now passed both the House and Senate and is headed to the Governor for (hopefully) his signature.  This bill came up this past Monday before the full House Finance Committee. I had spoken with the chairman of that Committee (Delegate Bob Purkey. R - Va. Beach) about the bill and while he indicated he supported it in principle, he also pointed out that given the projected budget shortfall, the bill should be carried over to next year and reconsidered in what hopefully would be better economic times. In addition, the Subcommittee Chairman (Bobby Orrock, R- Spottsylvania) that heard this bill also told me he would oppose the bill, for many of the same reasons as Delegate Purkey.
 
As I have previoulsy mentioned, this was the first time in 20 years that we have gotten this legislation out of the Senate, and given that fact, I thought we now needed to fight hard for the bill. So I immediately informed the patron that we should add an amendment making the effective date of the bill July 1, 2010 in order to remove any fiscal impact (and the arguments that centered on that impact) from the current two-year budget cycle. Then I, and the lobbyist working for National Business College which is the school that championed bringing this legislation to the 2008 session, worked both the democrats and republicans on the full Finance Committee as hard as we could.
 
I cannot recall in my 30 years of lobbying ever overcoming the objections of both a committee chairman and the subcommitee chairman that heard my bill. There is a first time for everything!  The full Finance Committee voted 14 to 6 to pass the bill with my 2010 amendment. The no votes included Purkey, Orrock, three Dems from N. VA, and one legislator from Portsmouth. On the floor of the House, Delegate Bob Hull (D - Fairfax) rose twice to try and kill this bill. A number of legislators were asked to rise in support of the bill if that happened, and they did. The full House passed the bill 91 to 6 and the bill is now headed to Governor for his signature. (Open the attachment, click on SB 393 and then click any of the blue lines showing the history of the bill to see the assembly's voting record on this bill.)
 
Two other matters worth noting were discussed this week.
 
HB 766 dealing with "diploma mills" was rewritten for the second time at this session, this time by the Senate Education Committee. The new bill does no harm to our sector and so we have not objected to it, although it limits its application to degree-granting offenses only.
 
And the community colleges, who began the session basking in the big dollars they were looking to get primarily for workforce training, are now a bit more reserved in their joy, as this week the House indicated that funding for new capital outlay projects at 13 community colleges has been frozen due to lack of funds.
 
The session's scheduled adjournment is next Saturday. A deadlock in budget negotiations, or the recent VA. Supreme Court ruling involving transporation funding, may cause an extension.  We can only wait and see!

 
VCCA Legislative Report 2/23/08
 
This past week was spent trying to improve the chances for passage of SB 392, the one remaining bill removing the sales tax on textbooks that applies only to our students.You may recall that this bill has handily passed the Senate, but the House Finance Committee Chairman (Purkey R-Virginia Beach) and the Chairman of the Finance Subcommittee this bill was assigned to (Orrock R-Fredericksburg), seem intent on killing it.
 
I have met with both of them, and almost all of the the members of the subcommittee that heard the bill this week. At my request the patron of the bill, Sen. Martin, had prepared and amendment to his bill making it effective beginning in 2010. My purpose in suggesting this amendment was to remove the argument that the current budget situation would not allow for the any legislation that would further increase the projected deficits. By moving the effective date to the next two year budget, we take that argument away and still retain the momentem this bill enjoys, given its strong passage by the Senate (38-0).
 
The bill was heard by the House Finance Committee and both the patron and I testified in support of its passage. The Subcommittee Chairman spoke against its passage and was, I think, somewhat surprised that the subcommitee vote was 6-2 in favor of the bill, with my suggested amendment.
 
The bill will now be heard Monday morning by the full House Finance Committee where, based upon my lobbying of the committee members, there could be a rather close vote. Even if we are successful those who want this bill to fail still have plenty of ways to make that happen, including re-referring it to the House Appropriations Committee for yet another vote, and/or killing it on the floor of the House if it should get that far.
 
I was under the impression that a website was being set up by a third party to engage students to contact legislators requesting their support of this legislation. To the best of my knowledge that has not occurred and so there is limited outside pressure being applied to legislators to vote our way. That is not helping our chances. Nonetheless, I continue to argue the equity issue because at the end of the day, that is really what this legislation is about.
 
The "diploma mill" legislation will also be heard next week and despite my concerns that the amended version of the bill may not include diploma mills that are not offering degrees, SCHEV seems to want the bill to pass in its amended form. I am not going to oppose them, despite what I perceive as technical flaws in the bill, as opening up the bill now could lead to the insertion of new language "on the fly" by legislators that may have unintended consequences for our sector.

 

 
VCCA Legislative Report 2/16/08

The big news this week was the budget, or as some are saying on Capitol Hill, "what's left of it!"  Pre-session estimates of a couple of hundred million dollar shortfall by the Governor have now been adjusted to somewhere between $1.4 and $2 billion dollars covering the remainder of this fiscal year, and the July 08 to June 2010 new budget.  That is starting to sound like "real money".

 
The fallout is that House Republicans will now start picking apart the Governor's proposed budget for the next two years, which are considered the "legacy years" for this Governor. They will oppose any new programs especially when the fiscal situation requires that money must be taken from existing programs to fund them. This is NOT a good place for the Governor to be.
 
Already the Governor has folded on his proposed General Obligation Bond referendum (SB 581) which was primarily focused on new money for higher education and community colleges. His revised proposal (SB 795 - Senate Floor Substitute) is a bond package that does not have to be approved by the citizens of Virginia and is for less money than the original proposal. This new bond proposal passed the Democrat-controlled Senate this week by a vote of 22-18, telling us something about how controversial this bond package has now become given the state of the economy.  Over in the Republican-controlled House, the plan is to reduce the  dollar amount of the Governor's revised bond package even further. A compromise on this bond proposal will no doubt be reached in the final hours of the session, after much chest pounding by both Ds and Rs. (To get a look at the schools are going to get the bond money open the attachment, click on SB 795, and then click on Senate Floor Substitute.)
 
We continue to try and figure out a way to obtain House Finance Committee approval for now passed Senate bill removing the sales tax on textbooks. The approach that may produce the best chance of success would involve amending the legislation's effective date until 2010. That may or may not be acceptable to all parties, and we are continuing to explore that and other options in an effort to not throw away the benefit of Senate passage of this legislation at this session.
 
VCCA Legislative Report 2/9/08

This week the gloomy state budget numbers caught up with the textbook sales tax legislation. A subcommittee of the House Finance Committee, and then the full House Finance Committee, voted to carry over HB 1326. The lack of a patron with seniority on the money committees was not helpful, but the greater problem centered on the growing hole in the proposed two-year state budget. Apparently based on ever-increasing projected budget deficits, key House members have nixed passage of bills like this one that have a negative fiscal impact.

 
All is not lost at this point, but things have certainly taken a turn for the worst. The House bill is gone but we do have the Senate version of this bill (SB 392) that has passed the Senate 38-0, coming over to the House for consideration. I have suggested to the patron of that bill that we amend the Senate bill to indicate that its provisions will not go into effect in the 2008-10 budget cycle as a way to deal with this impasse in the House. No word yet as to whether this compromise is acceptable to the patron and if it is, we will still have to determine if it is acceptable to the House.  At the end of the day it would be a real shame to lose the political inertia of strong Senate approval of this legislation at this session, so we are considering all options at this stage. 
 
HB 766 dealing with diploma mills has been re-written at the request of the House Courts of Justice Committee and has now passed the House. SCHEV seemed to want total control of this legislation but I have suggested to them that the rewritten bill does not appear to apply to diploma mills that are not offering degree programs. SCHEV says they wiill take another look at the language.
 
All of the legislation making the community colleges the new workforce training agency in Virginia is moving through the session with no opposiiton. And both the new money in the budget for public postsecondary education improvements and approval for the $1.6 billion bond package for higher ed are both sailing through the House and Senate.
 
At this point in the session I believe we have excluded our sector from the many bills placing new responsibilities on instittutions of higher education regarding mental health policies and procedures.

 
VCCA Legislative Report 2/3/08

Next week is one of those traditional "crunch weeks" at the General Assembly, as both House and Senate fast approach the weekend deadline for consideration of bills that have originated in their own chambers. After next weekend, with the exception of certain money-related legislation and some other special exceptions. the House will only be considering Senate bills that survived the Senate, and the Senate will similarly be voting only on House legislation.

 
VCCA's legislative agenda has been very full since the opening day of the session. We knew going in that we would need to work hard on the removal of the sales tax on textbook legislation.The Senate bill (SB 392), after some quiet work and one amendment pushing out the effective date, has now passed the Senate. Next week the slightly different House version of the this legislation will be heard probably both in subcommittee and the full House Finance Committee. If the bill on the House side passes, I want to caution that because the legislation effectively creates a half million dollar budget hole, the budget conferees who will be meeting until the session ends could still - in effect - kill these bills by not coming up with alternative revenue sources. So the fat lady hasn't gotten out of the limo yet!
 
We also knew we would have to stay on top of the SCHEV legislation dealing with "Diploma Mills" (House Bill 766). This is a bill that SCHEV insisted on creating and introducing over our concerns that the language could be overly complicated and the legislation difficult to enforce due to the fact that many of the bad actors operate on line. SCHEV, in their usual style, could not be dissuaded and when this bill came up before committee it was "chewed on" for all of the new legal definitions it created and the problems associated with doing that. The bill was basically sent back to SCHEV for a week and then presented again with somewhat new language that has been "substituted" for the original. In the interim I talked with key legislators on the House Courts Committee, like Delegate Dave Albo, about what this bill should and should not do. The substitute appears to be in good shape and is now on the House Floor for consideration.
 
Finally, we continue to monitor and actively lobby a slew of legislation that was generated by the Tech massacre. In most cases the new mental health requirements of these bills could not be accomplished by our schools, which in many cases have no on-campus "president" nor any relationship with the mental health system.   Our goal has been to ensure that any new requirements either "may" apply, or won't apply, to our sector even though many of these mandates "will" apply to the public sector. So far we have been successful in accomplishing that goal (for example see SB 636). We also worked closely on HB 752 to ensure our sector was not impacted. This week that bill's patron told me the legislation had become so complicated that he would be striking the bill. We can live with that outcome!
 
And the giant battle we were involved in during the first two weeks of the session, along with ABHES and CCA, concerning dental assistants is over. The dental profession has gotten overwhelming approval from the legislature to do exactly what they want, and the Governor is going to sign their legislation.

 
VCCA Legislative Report 1/27/08

The big news is that thanks to the work of one Senator in particular (Sen. John Watkins), SB 393 removing the sales tax on text books of our students has passed the Senate on a 38 to 0 vote. We had to agree to a six-month delay in the effective date of this legislation after discussions with the StateTax Commissioner and key senators on the Finance Committee, in order to give the state time to find a way to make up the $300-500,000 revenue loss created by expanding the current sales tax exemption for our students. It was a deal I had no trouble cutting!

 
The companion bill in the Senate, HB 1326, is taking just the opposite track, as it is stalled in a House subcommittee and has not really been given much attention. But the fact that the Senate has taken such a strong stand should be helpful as House members consider essentially the same legislation.
 
Over the last two weeks we also fought a very hard battle with the Dental Association and their team of 5 lobbyists over legislation dealing with the regulation of a new order of dental assistants in Virginia (SB 151 and HB 1431). The legislation did not recognize accreditors like ABHES or SACS, but only on entity (CODA). We testified at before four committees and subcommittees on this legislation, and at various times brought in the chief counsel for ABHES, the CEO of CCA, and a rural dental school administrator from far southwest Virginia who tesitifed that passage of the law would essentially not allow him to offer the program. But the dentists' lobby, which spent nearly a half a million dollars on state legislators last year were relentless in their quest to control the marketplace by requiring training in only their CODA schools and credentialing by only their testing entity, DANB.  We were only able to convince one legislator to break from the grip of the dentists and vote with us. A day later he "changed" his vote.
 
Delegate Tata's bill on diploma mills (HB 766) meanwhile, ran into a very cold reception at the House Courts of Justice Committee. The Committee, dominated by lawyers, were very concerned about all the new language this bill contains, and sent the bill back to SCHEV for a week to see if they could improve it. Our job is to make sure that no funny language appears in the rewritten bill that was not part of the original bill VCCA worked on.
 
All in all, it has been a very busy two weeks for VCCA in the halls of the General Assembly.

 
VCCA Legislative Report 1/19/08

We are engaged in a brutal battle with the dental professionals regarding whether or not VA will recognize ABHES-trained dental assistants. Both national groups are seeing this trend in a number of other states and have apparently decided to fight it state by state and perhaps by even filing litigation that would affect all states. So I am going to work with them in Virginia till the end on the two bills we are dealing with regarding dental assists (HB 1431 and SB 151).
 
The Senate bill dealing with the sales tax on text books (SB 392)was heard this week before the most powerful committee at the legislature, the Senate Finance Committee. I was the only presenter representing our sector and once again the main oppostion was from Sen. Saslaw, a democrat from Arlington who now is also the Senate Majority Leader. The committee asked questions for about 30 minutes on this bill, and I actually think we were getting close to winning a very close committee vote when the Comm. Chairman - Democrat Chuck Colgan (also from N. VA)  - asked that the bill "go by" so that committee members could discuss it further. That means he was starting to worry that our arguments might prevail and the bill might actually make it out of committee so he stopped it from coming to a vote until next week. In the meantime I am working with some republican members of the committee on some language that might limit the bill's application to only accredited schools and perhaps even delay the effective date of the bill until 09 or 2010.
 
After pretty much defusing all of Saslaw's arguments, he hit me with his final shot - one that had me and most of the full committee furrowing our brows a bit. He said that since our schools were all so profitable they ought to pay the sales tax for all of our students voluntarily!  Wow, EXXON better watch out, they are next!
 
So with the proper amendments we might have a chance to get this bill out of the Senate Finance Comm. for the first time in 20 years. If we do, Saslaw will try and kill it on the Senate Floor and as Majority Leader there is a good chance he will be successful unless we can get at least two democrats to break ranks and vote with the R's. The companion bill in the House is HB 1326 and has not been called up yet.
 
I have also met twice this week with House members about HB 721 and suggested that the responsibilities this bill places on higher ed institutions simply is not workable for our instittutions. I have suggested language that would exempt us out, or change the new requirements of the bill to "may" instead of "shall" for our schools.  Most legislators I have talked with seem receptive to these ideas.
 
Finally, the two companion workforce training bills are out and will be considered shortly. They are HB 1313 and SB 252. The main provisions of both are to transfer the administration and delivery of WIA dollars and training to the community college system. This a a direct order from the Governor (and a big disappointment for us) so while we are monitoring it, there is not much we can do to fiddle with it. HB 980 (putting community college career coaches into every high school) was stricken by the patron this week, but before I cracked open a good bottle of Burgundy I thought I would check with the Chancellor of the CC system. Turns out the Chancellor wanted the bill pulled in favor of another "more effective" bill on this subject that will be introduced shortly.

 
VCCA Legislative Report 1/13/08
 
The 2008 session of the Virginia General Assembly convened this past Wednesday for a 60-day session that will be dominated by consideration and passage of a 2008-09, $78 billion state budget. The House and Senate are now controlled by different political parties, so the dynamics of moving the budget, and for that matter any controversial legislation, through the legislature takes on a whole new set of challenges as the conservative Republican controlled House and more moderate Democrat controlled Senate each test the will of the other regarding high visibility legislation. This session those "hot" topics will include praising or blasting various components of the Governor's proposed budget,  immigration, firearm rights, payday lending, and smoking restrictions. I expect three to four thousand bills and resolutions to be introduced over the next two weeks, all of which will have to be considered and acted upon by the March 8th scheduled adjournment date.
 
One item in the Governor's budget proposal of particular interest to VCCA members is his effort to pump in sustantial new dollars towards higher education facilities in Virginia. House Bills 31, 594, and Senate Bills 31 and 581 are the legislative vehicles for those efforts. The $1.6 billion bond legislation, should it pass the 2008 session, must also receive voter approval in November before becoming law. You should also note that additional revisions to the state statute dealing with workforce training and the administration of federal WIA dollars are  encompassed in HB 1312 adn SB 252. And SB 329 - dealing with the sales tax on textbooks  - has also been introduced by Senator Martin and a number of House members have agreed to sign onto this legislation (although some who were asked declined).
 
Two unexpected bills that have already appeared and that I am working on are SB 151 and HB 752. 151 contains language that will have the effect of ruling out dental assitants being trained in Virginia by most private career schools based on the accreditation criteria contained in the billl. I am going to try and fix that language by referencing any accrediting entity approved by the the USDOE. SB 752 is legislaton that came out of the VA Tech tragedy and would place new responsiblities regarding mental health information on all postsecondary institutions in Virginia. These new requirements really do not fit, and in my opinion would be very  difficult to implement at, career colleges and I have already met with the patron of this bill to discuss exempting our sector from its provisions.
 
A few words about this opening, and future reports. The attached matrix will provide you with the bill numbers, patrons, and a brief summary of all legislation tracked by the VCCA.  You can click on the Bill Number and when the next window comes up click on Full Text to actually read the bill as introduced. New language being proposed is always in italics. You can also click on the name of the patron of the bill to see background and contact information on him or her. The matrix will be updated each week to show the progress (or lack thereof) of each piece of legislation being tracked or specifically mentioned in my weekly reports. And bills that VCCA is actively taking a position on will be highlighted in these periodic reports.
 
As usual, feel free to contact me if you have questions about any legislation discussed in these weekly reports, or any other matter coming before the 2008 session of the Virginia General Assembly.