ROANOKE, Va. – The Virginia General Assembly’s legislative session will start this month.
It is delayed Wednesday due to water outages in Richmond. The House of Delegates will meet briefly on Wednesday. Then, they will recess and reconvene on Monday, Jan. 13.
When lawmakers reconvene, they plan on tackling several issues from education to tax relief.
10 News spoke with our local lawmakers about their goals for this year.
Delegate Sam Rasoul said he would like to file a law ensuring that all teachers are paid the national average.
He said the bill will also increase funding for schools that help students with disabilities, students from low-income backgrounds and English learners.
“We have a new study that shows that Virginia is really lagging in the investments. We’re not even paying our teachers the national average, so how can we support our students and teachers?” said Del. Rasoul.
Del. Rasoul also said he would like to rehab the Catawba Hospital.
“We’ll be putting forward a budget amendment to ensure that we can rehab the Catawba Hospital, so that way, it’s offering services around substance use disorder and mental health treatment. We need to make sure that we’re making those critical investments on this side of the state.”
Meanwhile, Sen. David Suetterlein would like for Virginians to have tax relief.
He wants to extend the current enhanced standard deduction for taxes.
Currently, the standard deduction will expire in January 2026. The current standard deduction is part of a tax bill passed during President Donald Trump’s first term back in 2017. It will expire in January 2026.
It’s $8,500 for single individuals and $17,000 for people who are married.
“If it doesn’t, it’s over $600 right now in what your tax burden would be go up, so we increased it a thousand dollars a few years ago. I would have liked to see it go up even higher. That’s something we need to continue having a long-term discussion about increasing the standard deduction because the standard deduction is a set dollar amount and with inflation the tax rate, they keep collecting more. You need to have a standard deduction to increase this as well,” said Sen. Suetterlein.
The law would also make the refundable earned income tax credit permanent and allow car tax relief.
Sen. Suetterlein also wants to focus on laws that would expand work-based education.
He filed a law to protect children’s privacy online too.
The law would require sites to ask for parental consent before kids register for them.
“I think that we need to protect everyone’s privacy online. Unfortunately, Virginia, a few years ago during the democratic trifecta, passed a law written by the tech companies that doesn’t really protect people’s privacy, and worst of all, it says you’re an adult when you’re 13. So they can take your data, sell your data, use it excessively to market towards you,” said Sen. Suetterlein.
Suetterlein said a similar law in New York was passed last year.
Both are also concerned about electric rates.
“Introducing a bill that allows for certain businesses to be able to competitively go out onto the marketplace and hopefully that will be able to lure more businesses that are really worried about energy costs. What we know is that cost of living is just too high and it’s hurting businesses and individuals alike.”
Suetterlein said he wants to lower electric rates.
“Governor Youngkin and I have a different view and we’re continuing to work to lower electric rates and that work is obviously very needed,” said Sen. Suetterlein.