RICHMOND — Virginia senators made a rare June return to the state Capitol on Tuesday to address a contentious issue related to military tuition waivers — and after more than five hours of backroom dealings and impassioned floor speeches, they took no action.
The fruitless day angered scores of military families and advocates who had converged on Richmond to urge lawmakers to restore the program, which provides college tuition waivers for the families of veterans killed or disabled in the line of duty. The program also applies to law enforcement officers and firefighters, and in recent years it has ballooned in cost to the point that higher education officials said it was unsustainable.
“We’re extremely frustrated,” said Suzanne Wheatley, 59, of Norfolk, who said her husband served in the Navy for 26 years. “I took a day out of my life, I took a day out of my child’s life to be here, as did many of my friends. … It’s just ridiculous.”
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The state budget adopted in May by lawmakers of both parties and signed into law by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) contained sharp limits on the program. The cuts drew swift complaints from veterans groups, and Youngkin — whose administration sought the limits — appointed an advisory group to propose revisions that the General Assembly could consider at its next regular session in January.
But the complaints continued, and in a military-heavy state that seeks to be the most accommodating place for veterans, politicians responded. Youngkin earlier this month urged lawmakers to return in special session to undo the change. House Speaker Don L. Scott Jr. (D-Portsmouth) set June 28 as the date for the House of Delegates to return, promising to restore the program to its previous state and then revisit ways to make it more sustainable during next year’s session.
Democrats who control the Senate chose to return Tuesday, which coincided with primary voting for congressional elections, and announced that they would take up some revisions to the program but did not support fully restoring it.
That set up a conflict with Republicans and some Democrats who wanted to go further. On Tuesday, Sen. Bryce E. Reeves (R-Orange) proposed a full repeal measure. But Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), the powerful chairwoman of the Finance and Appropriations committee, proposed a more limited set of changes.
Lucas’s measure would have made clear that anyone enrolled for the coming school year is grandfathered into the existing program, and it would have fully restored the program for the families of veterans killed in the line of duty or wounded in combat with 90 percent disability. It would not have allowed families of veterans with noncombat disabilities to take part.
On Tuesday, the Finance and Appropriations committee had scheduled a meeting for 11:45 a.m. ahead of a 1 p.m. floor session. As members arrived, the hearing room filled with onlookers and people wishing to speak. But rather than gavel into session, the senators kept disappearing into two backrooms. Sometimes all the Republicans went on one side and all the Democrats on the other; sometimes they vanished in bipartisan clusters.
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That went on for about an hour and 20 minutes before all the members took their seats and Lucas called the committee meeting to order. But she immediately announced that she was not going to docket any bills.
As it turned out, the rules of the special session required that any budget-related bill be approved by 80 percent of the Senate. Because so many senators wanted full repeal, leaders could not line up enough support for Lucas’s partial measure. So she decided no bill would be heard.
“I care about veterans, first responders and their families,” Lucas told the assembled crowd, many of them wearing T-shirts that called for “reverse and repeal.” “I also care about ensuring future participants will have access to the program. We are still working on a long-term solution. All of us — all of us — want to protect this program.”
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Lucas said she was appointing a “special select work group” of five senators — three Democrats and two Republicans — “to come up with a more eloquent solution in the coming weeks.”
Sen. Barbara A. Favola (D-Arlington), who Lucas said would chair the group, said its first meeting will take place June 28, the same day the House of Delegates plans to come back into special session. Lucas said she also was tasking the state’s audit agency, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, to expedite a review of the program and create proposals to make it more sustainable over the long term.
The committee also came up empty on one other legislative item: Lucas had proposed a budget bill that would have legalized skill games, or slot-machine-like gambling devices, at convenience stores and truck stops around the state.
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The General Assembly passed such a bill during its regular session earlier this year, but Youngkin proposed a slate of amendments that essentially banned the devices in most major cities across the state. Lawmakers balked at approving his changes, so Youngkin vetoed the bill. Both he and General Assembly leaders suggested that they were open to revisiting the issue, which owners of convenience stores say is crucial to the health of their businesses.
On Monday, though, Youngkin issued a statement saying that he would not consider any skill game legislation until the military tuition issue was resolved. Lucas cited his statement Tuesday in announcing that the bill would not be considered in tandem with the military tuition measure. “I am not going to pit constituents against each other,” Lucas said.
Senate Majority Leader Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) said in an interview later that leaders hope to revisit the skill games issue later this year.
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Surovell and Lucas made one more attempt to take action on the military tuition bill. After the committee meeting, the full Senate convened — with members once again disappearing into backrooms to try to work out a deal. This time, Democratic leaders proposed passing a delay on the program’s budget cuts, allowing time for the various advisory committees to recommend long-term changes.
But Republicans again balked. That left nothing for lawmakers to do but make speeches.
“To say I’m disappointed is an understatement,” Reeves told his fellow senators. “We’re going to have to rely unfortunately on our friends in the House to probably clean this bill up or clean this matter up … and the real victims in this whole thing are going to be those families who are affected by it.”
Several Democrats pointed out that current program participants are grandfathered in and not affected by the cuts, and that the costs have gotten to the point that something has to change.
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The tuition waiver program was started in the 1930s for families of World War I veterans, and eligibility has been broadened over the years to include people going to graduate school and the families of veterans from other states. According to a legislative analysis, the cost of tuition waivers rose from about $12 million in 2019 to more than $65 million last year — 445 percent growth.
“We’re doing everything we can right now to basically preserve this program and preserve its continued viability,” Surovell said in remarks on the Senate floor. Participation “has been so overwhelming that in many ways it has jeopardized the viability of the program.”
In the end, the Senate promised to return to special session on July 1, after the House has taken its own action on the bill. Lucas declined to tell reporters what she plans to do if the House sends over a full restoration of the program. “I’ll make up my mind then,” she said.
