A late friend, who was on the local bar association’s ethics committee, offered wise overarching advice to attorneys.

If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.

Fairness is often defined as impartial and just treatment or behavior without favoritism or discrimination.  In this case, we are not talking about political favoritism, which is an outcome of elections, but about corruption, which has become institutionalized in the General Assembly.

Multiple studies have shown that even babies know what is fair.

The bottom line here is that children, even young ones, show remarkable sophistication not just in their understanding of and conformity to norms of fairness but also in their ability to enforce fairness in others and to flexibly tune fairness to different situations.

Sure, children are selfish sometimes. We should recognize, however, that just like in adults, alongside their impetus for self-maximization runs a deep and maturing concern for fairness—not just for themselves but for others as well.

Even in adulthood, most citizens retain the ability to know what is fair.  The General Assembly fails that test.

Major issues in its operations have become intertwined and additive, producing what we have now: a system that combines short sessions, unlimited campaign donations, and a purposeful shortage of professional staff, leading to uninformed members and undue influence by lobbyists.  Tolerance for conflicts of interest completes the degradation.

This author has witnessed firsthand how those factors destroy any reasonable expectation that the public interest is adequately reflected in the Code of Virginia. That outcome and their daily experiences in Richmond simply cannot “feel right” to most members.

So stop doing it.

Conflicts of Interest

Members’ treatment of conflicts of interest may not be as decisive as the other distortions of the legislative process, but may be the most troubling on a personal level.

We’ll start with a scandal surrounding the money committees. Power over the budget positions members’ businesses to receive undue deference from regulators whose budgets they control.

For decades, budget machinations have placed senior appointees in the executive branch, especially those in the Secretariat of Health and Human Resources, in a position where they are deliberately constrained by their agency’s budget from carrying out their federal and state legal obligations. This author has written about that for years.

Two nasty episodes in a single week in the 2026 session cause the author to reconsider the General Assembly as an institution.

The Senate. In a recent article, we saw that the Chair of the Senate Appropriations and Finance Committee sponsored Senate Bill 30. It included an amendment to the baseline 2026 budget to raise Medicaid payments to her private business. She voted for that bill. She also serves on the Senate Education and Health Committee, which both drafts legislation that sets rules for her business and oversees its regulator.

We should be able to count on members of the Virginia General Assembly to avoid such conflicts of interest, but we cannot. The General Assembly Conflicts of Interest Act has too many exceptions. And when even the exceptions are insufficient to allow them to do what they want, members interpret them away.

While voting for SB30, the Chair and other Senators noted, for the record, abstentions on budget items in which they have a personal financial interest. Thus, they are protected from the consequences of their own ethics law. We thank them in the same spirit in which they did it.

The House. Using a previously cited example, the House Appropriations Committee tabled a bill this year that would have provided additional personnel to the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) to enable that agency “to impose sanctions on providers for human rights violations if such violations pose a threat to health, safety, or the life of individuals receiving services.”

The message was unmistakable to the DBHDS leadership and its inspectors.  Inspect all you want, but do not presume to shut down the worst actors, even though federal and state laws require you to do so. They have probably guessed whose specific business may have been meant.

A Wider Look

In a broader context, the General Assembly permits unlimited campaign donations to part-time legislators who have very short annual sessions and allocates too few funds for staff to help them vet legislation. What could go wrong does.

Unlimited Campaign Donations. Unlimited campaign contributions speak for themselves, loudly. Virginia is one of only five states that sets no limits on individual, state party, PAC, corporate, or union contributions.

The largest donations are a boon for members who don’t want to spend time raising money and don’t want primary opponents. Which is all of them.

Virginia law pretends that public disclosure of those contributions is a fair tradeoff. That is demonstrable nonsense. It assumes shame. There is none.

Session Length and the Scarcity of Permanent Staff. Six-week and eight-week sessions ensure that few of the thousands of bills receive thorough and balanced consideration. The General Assembly operates with very little permanent staff. That allows lobbyists to set the terms of debate on too many issues. This author has seen and reported on lobbyists, with the encouragement of committee chairs, taking over the floor during consideration of legislation.

Permanent staff take direction from the members, but ideally would do the bulk of the work of assessing legislative options in support of the members. A bipartisan staff for each standing committee is needed, not just personal staff. The last authoritative record of the number of permanent staff serving the 140 members of the Virginia General Assembly was 351 in 2021. That was down from 533 in 2015. Why the decrease? The leaders of both houses should explain.

Lobbyists. The Virginia Public Access Project reports:

There were 1,117 individuals who registered to lobby (the General Assembly) in the May 2024-April 2025 lobbying year.  

That is three times as many lobbyists as permanent staff.

Lobbyists are necessary. In a complex modern state, they play a role in a republican form of government by members hearing from issue experts. But no one lobbies on both sides of an issue. They largely represent companies, trade associations, labor interests, and local and regional governments. Too few represent people without the means to care for themselves, including those bedridden in nursing homes and the intellectually and developmentally disabled who cannot function in society without help.

Their numbers speak to their perceived value to their employers. Their influence in the General Assembly is too often directly proportional to the size of their unlimited campaign checks.

Bottom line

Despite all that, most members vote according to their conscience to the extent they understand the full impact of legislation.

There are at least three fundamental problems:

• Members don’t have the time or the staff to fully vet most issues, leaving them too heavily influenced by lobbyists.
• Too much campaign money is donated by too few donors, both leaving the appearance and sometimes the reality of bought votes and skewing the influence of large donor lobbyists.
• Finally, members allow their chambers’ rules to skirt the clear intent of their own conflict-of-interest law, enabling the votes of a few members to advance their personal business interests.

Three recommendations:

• Increase professional staff, especially by establishing bipartisan staff for the committees.
• Pass campaign donation limits that will convince the public that members’ votes are not for sale. That will also help balance the influence of lobbyists.
• At a minimum, reform the General Assembly Conflicts of Interest Act to bar members whose businesses accept money directly from the executive branch from serving on the money committees. More care will have to be taken in reforming assignments to the other committees. For example, it does not serve the public interest to bar physicians from the health committees.

Just fix it.

Make the General Assembly honorable by design.