What’s old is new again

After a flurry of activity last Monday, February 4 – the legislature reached cross-over.  This means that the Senate can only hear House bills and the House of Delegates can only year Senate Bills.  Monday was extremely hectic because so many bills of interest were yet to be acted upon by the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee.  But hear them it did for a long afternoon and evening.  Of particular interest to IIAV was our legislation on navigators – SB 1261.  It must be good because some legislators think we went too far and others think we didn’t go far enough.  The bill passed the committee on a 12 – 4 vote and then passed the Senate on effectively a 29-11 vote.

Following the vote however we learned that Attorney General Cuccinelli had communicated with both of our bills sponsors – Senator Puckett and Delegate O’Bannon – that he now opposed our bills and might have his staff speak against the bills following crossover.  Our House bill by the way, HB 2246 passed the House on a 81-19 vote.  We have been trying to meet with the AG’s staff to ascertain why this change of position/interest and the first explanation left us wondering if his office had in fact read our bill.  The IIAV bill does in effect two things – makes navigators subject to Virginia’s applicable fair trade and privacy regulations and subjects them to the regulatory authority of the Bureau of Insurance for violations of those Code sections.  This is virtually no different than the Federal and State GLBA laws.  While our original bill provided substantial regulation over navigators, we backed off this effort given arguments that have not been established on whether or not the Bureau would have the regulatory authority to conduct such authority over navigators.  Thus is the complicated nature of Affordable Care Act and its constantly moving regulations.

As you review the updated – post crossover – legislative table, you’ll see that there’s just not that much left to get worked up about.  You’ll see that a lot of tort reform bills have worked their way through the system and we might even see a strong prohibition on texting and driving bill move through the legislature.  Having said that, you’ll see most of the remaining activity in the legislature on transportation issues and amending the budget.  If we hear more about the AG’s opposition to our navigator bills, we’ll let you know.

Otherwise, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Robert N. Bradshaw
IIAV President & CEO
804-929-4134