RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — A day before the end of the Virginia General Assembly’s 2024 regular session, Governor Glenn Youngkin has announced that he has taken action on 84 of the bills that made it to his desk this year.
According to a release from Youngkin’s office, the governor signed 64 bills into law, amended 12 bills and vetoed eight bills.
One of the eight bills vetoed by Youngkin was SB 235, which supporters say would have prevented public school districts from using Virginia’s parental notification law to broadly ban books from their schools without a rigorous process.
Another bills vetoed by Youngkin was SB 606, which would have required Virginia to return to the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a multi-state compact which uses member states’ Department of Motor Vehicles and Department of Elections data to ensure accurate voter rolls.
Youngkin’s administration removed Virginia from ERIC last year, citing concerns about how the data is shared.
“The financial burden of rejoining ERIC includes membership fees, which have increased more than 115% since 2022, and participation expenses. ERIC’s mandatory Eligible but Unregistered mailing will cost the Commonwealth hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is superfluous considering Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles’ automatic registration policies and sameday registration for voting,” said Youngkin in his veto statement regarding SB 606. “Since leaving ERIC, Virginia established data-sharing agreements with numerous states incurring no additional costs. Additionally, the Department of Elections has increased its data sources by collaborating with forty-one states to obtain driver’s license surrender data, while ERIC only provides data sharing with twenty-five states.”
More information about each bill that was amended or vetoed can be found here.
