Advocacy
Our Efforts
At CBIC, we are proud to collaborate with the tech councils of Virginia to support innovation in tech policy across the state.
Virginia Technology Councils’ 2024 Policy Agenda
The General Assembly has reached the midway point of the legislative session. By Tuesday, all House bills must be approved by the House, and all Senate bills must be approved by the Senate, or they are defeated for the year. Last week, committees largely completed work on the roughly 2200 pieces of legislation that were introduced this session, and the full House and Senate will work hard to complete their action by Tuesday evening. On Sunday, the House and Senate budget committees met to adopt committee amendments to Governor Youngkin’s introduced budget, and the full chambers will adopt revised budgets on Thursday. There are fewer than three weeks remaining until the scheduled adjournment of the 2023 session, and much work remains to be done. Here are a few updates on the progress of rvatech priorities so far this session:
About CBIC’s Advocacy and Government Affairs Committee
Consolidation of State Workforce Development Programs
With the broad support of the business community, the Youngkin Administration is advancing legislation to align and consolidate a myriad of workforce development programs across multiple agencies by creating a new single agency to align programs. The centralized agency will utilize data-driven insights to improve delivery of skill-building and workforce preparedness services to get workers in good paying jobs. HB2195 and SB1470 are advancing in slightly different forms in the House and Senate, but will be approved in both chambers.
STEM Education
Senators Stanley, Dunnavant and Hashmi sponsored legislation to create a Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Computing (STEM+C) Competition Team Grant Program. The legislation (SB806) passed the Senate this week with unanimous support to encourage interest in STEM+C-related subject areas and support STEM+C-related extracurricular team-building activities in public schools by providing grants to qualified schools for use in establishing or supporting STEM+C competition teams.
Broadband Deployment
Senator Stanley and Delegate Head introduced SB1029 and HB1752 to speed up broadband deployment by standardizing the process for broadband railroad crossings. The legislation puts in place requirements around the maximum waiting period and fees that railroad companies can require before broadband is allowed to cross a track. The legislation is advancing in both chambers with broad support.
Procurement Reforms
Senator Ruff sponsored SB912 to change where contractual terms and conditions are considered in the process for IT Procurement. The bill would have prohibited agencies from asking vendors to take exceptions to proposed terms and conditions in a proposal, and instead to consider terms and conditions during the negotiation phase of procurement as is already done with liability provisions. After passing the Senate General Laws committee with unanimous support, the Senate Finance committee sent the legislation to a procurement work group study with other procurement legislation to be considered during the interim and brought back during the 2024 session.
Tax Reforms
House (HB1405) and Senate (SB796) legislation has been approved by each chamber to allow a group of affiliated corporations to elect whether to file taxes in a consolidated form or separately, regardless of whether it reduces their overall tax liabilities. This legislation will make the Commonwealth more business friendly, including for many businesses in the technology sector.