Session Halfway Point Highlights Delicate Balance in the General Assembly

Session Halfway Point Highlights Delicate Balance in the General Assembly
By Tommy Herbert, VAMA Manager of Government Affairs

 

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests is it our duty to follow,” declared the famous 19th century British statesman and Prime Minister Lord Palmerston to the House of Commons one cold March morning in 1848.  

Palmerston was speaking as a spate of citizen and peasant revolutions gripped various old regimes of Europe, searching for greater liberty and political agency for the lower and the newly growing middle classes. While we do not face as dramatic circumstances as that, Palmerston’s words do ring true for VAMA’s Legislative Team as we pass Crossover Day in a period of divided government in Virginia.

The Democratic Senate of Virginia and the Republican House of Delegates, both held by the slimmest majorities, will begin on Wednesday to work on only the bills that have been passed in their counterpart Chamber. This means that from here on out, only the Democratic Senate can take action on the bills passed by the Republican House of Delegates, and vice versa. This is a dangerous time for any legislation, as each Chamber’s majority seeks to strong-arm, convince, or persuade the other to pass their agenda.

Divided government is, in general, good for the apartment industry and our policy priorities. Our issues often cut across partisan politics, leaving us sometimes coinciding with one party’s preconceptions and sometimes with the other’s. In divided government, each side of the aisle has a built-in incentive to work with the other on the policy merits of a bill or budget ask, because of (to use an old term from history class) the stalemate of Mutually-Assured Destruction, as each party has some unilateral way to kill any bill.

Policy merits are our specialty. Housing providers and our representatives have been doing quantitative research on housing policy benefits and drawbacks for years, and we have many solutions to put forward to address a whole spectrum of issues that exist in the housing policy space; things like the chronic multifamily housing shortage that is putting upward pressure on rents, environmentally friendly building, and reforming how we administer housing aid to those who most need it. We have policy merits falling out of our pockets.

This year we have been able to work with our traditional opposition in ways that had previously not been possible. By and large, we have been able to get to policy settlements that can address the concerns of the tenant community without harming the ability of housing providers to carry on business. This is especially important after the destruction that COVID and its associated policies have wreaked on apartment housing providers. In turn, we have joined in coalitions that are seeking funds to help targeted populations in chronic need gain more housing stability in a sustainable way.

Only time will tell if this political climate lasts in Virginia. Our nature as a political bellwether of the nation means that many variables can change the makeup of our legislature, not all of them within the control of the people who dwell there now. But for now, divided government brings us more friends, less enemies, and a greater ability to work toward our interests.