By Taylor Boyd
Local Republican lawmakers said legislation approved during the 2026 General Assembly session would raise costs for local governments, businesses and residents, and criticized measures dealing with gun restrictions, minimum wage increases and paid family leave.
Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Moneta, Del. Wren Williams, R-Stuart, and Del. Eric Phillips, R-Martinsville, discussed the session during recent appearances in Henry and Patrick counties ahead of the General Assembly’s April 22 reconvened session.
Stanley
Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Moneta, gave a legislative update to the Henry County Board of Supervisors at its March 24 meeting. He previously attended a meeting of the Republican Committee in Patrick County.
“As you all are probably aware, we were unable to pass a budget that was reconciled in the House of Delegates and the Virginia State Senate. There is a gulf of $2 billion between the proposals from the House and the Senate of each Chamber, which will not easily be rectified,” Stanley said, and noted that as a result, the General Assembly is scheduled to reconvene April 22.
Stanley said the General Assembly also approved unfunded mandates that he believes will fundamentally change local governments.
At the same time, he said lawmakers voted themselves a 300 percent pay raise, “which will come from you the Virginia taxpayers. Our salary right now, and I think it’s where it should be, is $18,000 a year. It’s a full time job, but you shouldn’t like it that much so that you do the job.
“They’re going to raise the employment and benefit package over $50,000 per year, plus an increase per diem, plus an increase in their retirement account every time they got a per diem or reimbursed cost that goes to the determination of the retirement accounts,” he said.
Stanley said legislation was passed to raise the minimum wage to $13.75 on Jan. 1, 2027, and $15 on Jan. 1, 2028.
“After that, every January it adjusts annually, only upward not downward based on the CPI (Consumer Price Index). It applies to all employees including our local governments. The governor has said she, ‘looks forward to signing this bill,’” he said.
A companion bill repeals the minimum wage exemption for farmworkers and certain temporary foreign workers brought in for agricultural work.
“So now, all of our farmworkers in Henry County and every county that I serve and every county in Southside and Southwest Virginia, must pay the minimum wage where we had allowed for an exemption for seasonal work,” Stanley said.
He said the change will increase the cost of food and could lead some small farms to close.
“This will have a tumultuous effect on our economy,” he added.
Stanley said 20 bills were passed that would place Virginia among the states with the strictest gun laws in the country.
“We will be the eleventh or twelfth state with an assault weapons ban if signed. Senate Bill 749 bans the sale, manufacture, import, or transfer of assault-style firearms or magazines holding more than 15 rounds after July of this year,” he said.
Although the bill would grandfather in lawfully owned weapons, Stanley said owners would not be able to sell them except to a federally licensed firearms dealer.
“You can’t take them out of state, and you can’t give it to your family members. It exempts law enforcement, military, and those firearms that are considered by their definition ‘antique.’ Every firearm under the classification of what is now an assault weapon is basically every firearm, including what you shoot turkeys with,” he said.
One bill Stanley sponsored would require recreation ballfields managed by local governments to have defibrillators available for participants.
“It’s actually a life-saving bill. We believe it will cost you $1,000 per defibrillator, and next year I’ll be proposing legislation that will create a grant fund to offset that cost so it is not an unfunded mandate,” he said.
Stanley said he views the bill positively because it helps localities care for their residents.
“Too often we’re seeing now, especially in adult softball leagues and even in younger children, people suffering from a heart attack while engaging in a sport that they love. For every minute that you don’t have someone who maybe could be hit with those paddles is one minute less that they have a chance of living,” he said.
Williams
Del. Wren Williams, R-Stuart, said a large number of tax, gun, housing and labor-related bills were proposed during the session.
“Some energy, but not a tremendous amount that were successful. Some of the big pushes were obviously the redistricting amendment language then came the wave of housing bills,” he said.
Williams said he opposes the housing bills because he believes they will not address affordability, but instead squeeze private ownership out of the market.
“Because it’s going to be too costly to provide that type of housing, which is only going to lead to more public housing, which is supported by public dollars. It just creates a rent controlled situation where the housing doesn’t get improved and rents don’t stay consistent. It’s just not a great route to take,” he said.
Williams said the approved collective bargaining measure for public employees will funnel significant unfunded costs to local governments.
“It’s where government employees decided to collectively bargain. Using the city of Roanoke, if they were to collectively bargain after like 2028 then it could cause their costs and overhead to rise,” he said.
Because the state did not provide funding, Williams said localities — and ultimately local taxpayers — will bear the increased costs.
Williams said the measure is similar to the paid family leave act, which would allow 12 weeks of paid family leave to care for someone or recover from surgery or a similar event.
“The requirements or restrictions on that are few and far between, so essentially you only need to be not even related, just causally related as far as knowing one another or being in a communal relationship. So if your friend has surgery and you’re going to watch after your friend, you can take this 12 weeks of paid leave and so can the friend,” he said.
Williams said the measure would be devastating for private employers and employees.
“So every Virginian on their pay stub is going to see a line item that goes to the VEC, Virginia Employment Commission, that will then be put into a general fund and divvied out to individuals claiming this particular benefit,” he said.
Williams said the estimated cost of the paid family leave act is between $2 billion and $5 billion, with no state funding attached.
Williams said many of his own bills this session were intended as introductory measures.
“I had this spam phone call bill where I talked to the providers in the industry and said, ‘look we need to tackle these spam calls.’ We had a big meeting about it and agreed that we were going to put some effort into working on that particular piece of legislation. It got carried over to next year, so I can work on it and hopefully bring it back,” he said.
Williams’ Halo Act bill, which would create a protective barrier around first responders so they can provide aid, was not heard this session. His government efficiency bill was killed in committee.
Williams said his bill to ban 7-OH received bipartisan support.
“It’s this sort of heroin-esque synthetic opioid that you can get in gas stations and stuff. It’s not good and it’s causing really high addiction rates, and a lot of rehabilitation centers are seeing problems with it,” he said.
While his bill made 7-OH and other synthesized derivatives illegal, Williams said kratom, the natural product, would remain legal.
Phillips
Eric Phillips, R-Martinsville, said affordability was the dominant theme of the General Assembly session, but he does not believe lawmakers passed anything that will make life more affordable for Virginians.
“I saw a lot of redistribution of wealth from one group to another, but I don’t know how taking from anybody makes life more affordable. If you look at what they did to your power bill with RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Initiative), if you look at what they’re doing to your paycheck with Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), all these things take money out of your pocket,” he said.
Although Republican lawmakers supported eliminating the car tax and grocery tax, Phillips said neither proposal passed.
Phillips also criticized the legislature’s approach to power generation. He said one of his bills, which would have allowed Virginia to build five additional combined cycle natural gas plants, was never placed on the committee docket.
“Virginia is very natural gas rich, and it’s some of the cleanest technology in the world. To allow permitting for five more of those to let them run their full lifecycle – it never even got heard in committee, never even got docketed,” he said.
Phillips said he believes the bill was not docketed because Democrats did not want to publicly oppose it.
“When they have those situations come up they don’t put it on the docket. Because of their radical environmental base they can’t do it, but they know they can’t tell you why they can’t do it, so they don’t docket them,” he said.
Phillips said he introduced several “aspiration bills” during the session, although many stalled in the Senate.
“I didn’t have a lot of bills completely killed this year, I had quite a few of my bills carried over,” he said.
Phillips said Democratic lawmakers, citing uncertainty over federal funding for Medicaid and other programs, were reluctant to advance any bill with a fiscal impact.
“Pretty much anything they had what they called a fiscal impact was very difficult to get through this year. One of the bills that I was excited about was to create a rural infrastructure fund to help create new neighborhood housing developments in rural areas, and I think I put a $20 to $25 million grant fund. That bill failed not because it wasn’t a good idea, but because they didn’t want to put $25 million out of the budget into it,” said Phillips, who was recently appointed to the Virginia Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission and most recently was selected to serve on the commission’s Executive Committee.
Another Phillips bill, which would have allowed the Virginia State Police to investigate deaths in Department of Corrections facilities, died in the Senate Finance Committee after passing unanimously in the House of Delegates and a Senate committee.
“Right now the Department of Corrections investigates themselves, so if there’s a death of an inmate or an officer in a prison, no outside agency comes in to look at it. They do it themselves, which is obviously not a great idea,” he said.
Phillips said Virginia has experienced significant problems within the prison system, including a number of deaths at Greensville Correctional Center.
“The Greensville Correctional Facility I think has had 39 deaths or maybe more in maybe three years, which is a lot, and we had our first officer death in 50 years in the Grayson County area, and that facility where an officer was killed by an inmate. So in a case like that I think it’s better to have an outside agency like the state police, who are the ones who investigate these types of things in regional jails or county jails,” he said.
Although the bill was carried over to next year, Phillips said it received broad support.
“But because it has a fiscal impact because they would have to hire a few more state troopers and buy more state trooper cars and equipment, ultimately their finance committee killed it even though it was unanimously passed by everyone who had heard it up until then,” he said.
