In Assembly's sprint to finish, bills on PFAS, insurer denial pass final hurdle

As hundreds of bills move toward an end-of-the-week deadline, legislation to limit forever chemicals on farm fields cleared a final legislative hurdle Tuesday.

So did a measure to rein in health insurer denials of coverage, as well as a bill to bar air pollution control permits to data centers that don't use "tier 4" backup generators that reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and particulates.

None of these made it through the multi-step process without changes.

Coming down to the wire, a bill on probation stumbles at Virginia General Assembly

Even never-changed bills faced a last-minute scramble. One was House Bill 283, which says children should not be removed from a home solely because their mothers took prescription medication to treat an opioid addiction while they were pregnant.

"We've done a lot of bills about child neglect," said state Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham. "I'm worried about how this would be constructed."

State Sen. Richard Stuart, R-King George, said he was concerned that the medication might make a mother unable to care for a child.

State Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, challenged that concern.

"This is really about helping mothers come forward and get the prescribed medication … we can't have them feel that going into treatment means they will lose their child," Favola said.

But her intense consultation with Stuart, while the debate over the bill continued, did not sway him. The bill, which passed the House 73-25, scraped by on a 21-19 party-line Senate vote. It now heads to Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

Evictions

Another never-changed bill, House Bill 1093, proposing to limit attorney fees to $100 when a tenant pays all back rent before the first court date for an eviction ruling, almost prompted a rare tie-breaking vote by Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi to eke through the Senate.

"We've done a lot of landlord-tenant bills this session, but this one goes too far for me," Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, said.

But a few minutes later, state Sen. Bryce Reeves, R-Orange, asked that the vote be reconsidered. The Senate agreed, then postponed a new vote for a day. This bill had passed the House on a 74-24 bipartisan vote.

Hashmi did have to break a tie on never-changed House Bill 86, which aims to promote mattress recycling.

Forever chemicals

The forever chemicals bill, Senate Bill 386, started as a complete ban on using sewage sludge as a fertilizer if the material included any PFAS, the perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances linked to increased risk of prostate, kidney and testicular cancers; low birth weights; decreased fertility; and increased high blood pressure in pregnant women.

The bill that finally passed says sludge can't be used if it contains more than 50 parts per trillion of two common forever chemicals: perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane sulfonate.

"It's a first step," Stuart, the bill's sponsor, said.

"I wanted more of a limit … but you need 21 votes," he said, to get a bill through the 40-member Senate.

Stuart brought the bill in large part after hearing from constituents across his rural Northern Neck district that PFAS chemicals were showing up in their wells.

The bill passed 40-0. It passed the House last week by an 86-12 vote.

Health insurance

Legislation, House Bill 481, on health insurer denials started off by saying denials had to be reviewed by a physician.

As it moved through House and Senate committees, these bodies said that if physicians were not available, a mental health clinician could review requests for mental health services, and a dentist could review requests for dental care.

The bill cleared final passage by a 98-1 vote after the House agreed with the Senate's tweak about dentists. The Senate had earlier approved the measure, with the dental provisions, unanimously.

Data centers

The data center legislation, House Bill 507, started as a requirement for state air quality monitoring next to data centers, but the high cost of that nearly derailed the measure. That prompted the sponsor, Del. John Chilton McAuliff, D-Loudoun, to propose a rewrite saying the Department of Environmental Quality should not issue air permits to data centers if the backup generators did not at least meet the pollution-reduction requirements of so-called "tier 4" with controls to reduce nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and particulates. It passed the Senate by a 25-15 vote after passing the House 61-34.

Illegal drugs

Also moving on is House Bill 637, which says possession of a residue of illegal drugs should be a misdemeanor, subject to no more than a year in jail, instead of a felony, subject to years in prison.

It passed the Senate on a 23-17 vote after moving through the House on a 63-33 vote. Because the Senate had accepted the final House version of this bill, it goes now to Spanberger.

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