Bacon's Rebellion

Youngkin’s Legislative Scorecard

Dick Hall-Sizemore

Photo credit: USA Today

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

Almost all recently-elected Virginia governors confront their first General Assembly session at a disadvantage. The legislative session has begun before the inauguration; their personal staffs, Cabinet members, and agency heads are either not yet all in place or are just getting oriented. Finally, they have not had the time to establish the personal relationships with legislators that are vitally important to their success. Glenn Youngkin embarked upon the governorship in January at an even greater disadvantage: he had no experience in government or the legislature.

Nevertheless, he came into office promising major changes on multiple fronts right away. His office released “Governor Youngkin’s Day One Game Plan Legislative Agenda.” This agenda listed 32 issues before the legislature that the governor was putting his approval behind. Most issues had at least two bills associated with them, one each in the House and Senate.

Now that the regular session has adjourned it would be a good time to see how the issues supported by the Governor fared. Being a former college basketball player, the Governor is obviously aware of the usefulness of a scorecard, as are most of us here at the peak of the college basketball season.

Scoring the fate of legislation is not as simple as the scoring in a basketball game, however. In basketball, a shot is either made or missed. In the legislature, bills either pass or fail, but, unlike in basketball where the ball that emerges from the bottom of the net is the same ball that went in the hoop, in the legislative process the bill that ultimately passes is often not the same bill that was introduced. It could be a watered-down, perhaps toothless, version of what it was originally. To continue the basketball analogy, the ball comes out of the net somewhat deflated.  Or, it may pass in a totally different form, almost unrecognizable from the original.  (In the “old days”, this was called getting the “shad treatment”.)  In basketball terms, the ball emerged from the net a different color from what it was when it entered.  Then there are the bills that do not pass, but do not actually get killed (miss the basket). This year, many were continued to the special session, which begins today and ends no one knows when. These bills are like basketballs spinning on the rim; they may eventually fall through the net, but they may spin off for a missed shot. Other bills have been carried over until the 2023 session. They are no longer in play this year, but they are not dead, either. They are in “time out.” Actually, most carried over bills will quietly die in a committee meeting sometime in November or December.

Just as there is a range of points that can be scored with made shots in basketball, the scoring system used here assigns a range of points, but based on how well the original bill fared, rather than how far away from the net the shooter was. Here is a summary of the categories and scoring system:

How well Governor Youngkin’s Day One legislative agenda fared depends on one’s perspective. Out of 32 issues, only 11 passed, about a third. Using the weighted scoring scheme, he scored only 8.5 points out of a possible 32, a batting average (to switch sporting metaphors) of .266. To be fair, six issues are still pending and the Governor could pick up some points with those. If those issues were held out of the accounting the Governor’s current batting average would increase to .327. On the other hand, of the six issues in the “pass” category, three passed with no or minimal opposition (walks). Take those issues and the pending issues out of the mix and the Governor’s batting average falls to .239.

That type of analysis assumes that all bills are “worth” the same. However, that is obviously not the case. Looking at the Governor’s top priorities, judged by the amount of publicity generated, he scored big wins on prohibiting face masks in schools and on the issue of sexually explicit materials in schools. On the other hand, he lost on charter schools and most of his tax proposals are either dead or tied up in the special session pending decisions on the budget.

Following is a list of the items in the Day One Legislative Agenda, by subject matter, and their status.

K-12 Education

A. Curriculum

1. General

2. Sexually explicit materials

3.  Divisive concepts

B.  Opening and face masks

C.  School Security 

  1. Incident reports
  1. School resource officers
  1. Safety audits

D.  Governor’s Schools

E.  Charter Schools 

  1. Establishment
  1. Lab schools

F.  Other

Taxation

A.  Income taxes

B  Sales Tax

C.  Property taxes

D.  Gas tax

E. Conformity

 Regulation Reform

Elections

A.  Integrity

B.  Board of Elections changes 

Public Safety

Labor; employees

A. Unions

B.  Health insurance

C.  Unemployment benefits

Coastal Resiliency

 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

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