VA Politics Explainer: Why is VA legislative session so short?

whosmy.virginiageneralassembly.gov

The Virginia General Assembly (GA) ended their session last week. Are they really done for the year?

The GA is in many ways a mini-version of our national legislature. Like the United States Congress, the GA is bicameral, with a larger House and smaller Senate; does most of its work through committees; and has a bunch of obscure rules with obscure names like “third reading” and “engrossment.” (Ew.)

But there is one big difference: U.S. Senators and Representatives have a full-time job, and pass laws throughout the year. VA Senators and Delegates are part-timers, with a very short legislative session at the beginning of the year. The Virginia Constitution lays out the rules for this short session: 45 days in even years, when we do the full budget, and 30 days in odd years. Both are typically extended an extra 15 days by a vote, so 60 and 45. This includes weekends! So even the long session barely goes into March.

Why so short?

Actually, a short session is not that unusual for a state legislature. There is a longstanding history of the part-time or “citizen legislature” that goes back to the country’s founding. Government was supposed to be something that civic minded leaders did in the winter before going back to their full time jobs – most often, as a gentleman or yeoman farmer. This noble idea is still widespread at the state level; in fact, only ten states have a full-time legislature.

Still, Virginia still has one of the shorter sessions among states, at least officially. Even the current session length is an improvement from the past; for the first half of the 1900s, the General Assembly only met every other year!

The “citizen” model has a lot to offer in theory. Members of Congress are often criticized as being out of touch. Part-time legislators supposedly have one foot back in their “real life,” so that they can stay more connected to the concerns of regular people than those Beltway insiders. Today, you can find great examples of this model at work right here in greater Richmond; Democratic Delegate Schuyler VanValkenburg is a Henrico County public school teacher, while Republican Senator Siobhan Dunnavant is an OB-GYN with HCA Virginia.

Still, these two are more the exception than the rule. Many Virginia legislators are wealthy business owners or are retired from the “real world;” almost a third are lawyers. With a salary of less than $20,000, potential candidates need another source of income, or a VERY understanding employer. Critics complain that the citizen legislator model, therefore, contributes to lack of ethnic, gender, and economic diversity in government.

The other problem with the short session is that the scope of work for state legislatures has changed dramatically in recent decades. The term for this I use in my State Government classes is “increased capacity;” states have the capacity to do more, in part because their citizens are demanding more from their state government. From the environment to economic development to healthcare, states play a growing role in policy issues old and new. Can a bunch of part-timers really be enough to handle this workload?

We saw this issue come to a head last year in Virginia, when the twin crises of COVID-19 and criminal justice reform prompted a special session that actually lasted longer than the regular one – 83 days! (Although to be fair, the summer/fall session followed a more leisurely pace than the regular one, with lots of days off.) Last year was certainly an extraordinary one (we hope). Still, there will be future challenges, and the GA may find themselves with more on their plate than they can handle in just a month or two at the beginning of the year. Even this year, legislators seemed to run out of time to hammer out a deal on marijuana legalization, punting a lot of the details to next year.

Does that mean that Virginia will become a full-time legislature? Not likely, at least any time soon. Major changes like these take years, and informal moves towards more legislative work are more likely. In the years to come, we may see more and longer special sessions, plus possible calls for emergency extensions to the short regular sessions. Once a summer session becomes more routine, we may also see increased salaries for legislators. We may get closer to a full-time legislature without official getting there.

Until then? Well, Henrico County Public Schools will continue to have a need for substitute teachers.