From the Desk of Don Gehring                               Date: February 27, 2009

State Update

The General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn tomorrow, Saturday, February 28th.   The House and the Senate will return for Reconvened Session on April 8th. 

Budget

The General Assembly is in the final hours of the 2009 session.  They have a number of matters yet to be resolved, including the budget bill.  We anticipate they will work through the weekend to adopt a compromise.  We will provide more detailed information once it becomes available.

Key Legislation

1849 bills and 700 resolutions were introduced.   We tracked 147 higher education and administration bills and 217 health related bills, totaling 364 bills.   

Below are some of the bills of interest that have passed the Senate and House:

Education and Administration Bills

• HB 1727 (Rust) and SB 1395 (Norment) Management of investment funds

• HB 1810 (Morrissey) Course credit for students called into active military duty

• HB 1878 (Cosgrove) Clarifications and revisions to voter registration and election processes

• HB 2037 (Iaquinto) Collection of debt owed to state agencies

• HB 2426 (May) and SB 1318 (Houck) Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act; collection of social security numbers

• HB 2464 (Morgan) and SB 1156 (Edwards) Tier 3 Management Agreements

• SB 994 (Miller) Employment of campus police

Health Bills

• HB 1598 (Hamilton) Revisions to the Certificate of Public Need (COPN) process

• HB 1768 (Dance) Exemption of COPN process for the Department of Corrections

• HB 1939 (Peace) and SB 968 (Blevins) Licensure of radiologist assistants

• HB 2024 (D. Marshall) and SB 1411 (Watkins) Availability of basic health insurance plans that excludes certain mandates

• HB 2044 (Nixon) Establishes an advisory committee to adopt standards for health information technology

• HB 2212 (C. Jones) Automated drug dispensing systems; multi-dose packaging

• HB 2407 (Hall) Revisions to the Health Practitioners’ Intervention Program

• HB 2458 (O’Bannon) Posting of charity care guidelines within a hospital

• HB 2396 (Bell) and SB 1142 (Whipple) Clarifies advance medical directives for psychiatric patients

• SB 1282 (Newman) Prohibits the Department of Health Professions from selling nurse address information and allows hospitals to use only the first name and the last initial of a health professional on a name tag

Below are the bills that were not passed by the General Assembly.  We don’t believe the failure to pass these bills will have a negative impact on the University or Health System.

Education and Administration Bills

• HB 1608 (Poisson) Automatic acceptance to a Virginia public institution if in the top 10% of their class

• HB 1638 (Poisson)  Out-of-state student surcharge

• HB 1656 (Marshall) Allows faculty members with a concealed weapon permit to carry guns on campus

• HB 1696 (Albo) 80% of students shall be in-state

• HB 1750 (Carrico) Campus police to report incidences to local police

• HB 1812 and HB 1815 (Morrissey) Questioning of employees about criminal convictions

• HB 1949 (Shuler) Retirement of teachers and administrative faculty

• HB 2174 (Hogan) Retention of energy savings by state agencies

• HB 2404 (Bell) Virginia Universities Clean Energy Development and Economic Stimulus Foundation

• HB 2526 (Janis) Judicial performance evaluations compiled by SERL

• SB 1037 (Hanger) In-state tuition for undocumented students

• SB 1127 (Petersen) State energy efficiency programs

• SB 1252 (Petersen) Green Public Buildings Act

Health Bills

• HB 1588 (R. Marshall) Mandates coverage of autism by insurance companies

• HB 1650 (L. Ware) Audit of pharmacy contracts

• HB 2145 (Nutter) Access to coverage information for health insurance provider contracts

• SB 843 (Marsh) Increases the cap on medical malpractice

• SB 964 (Blevins) Prohibiting cost sharing to be more than reimbursement

• SB 1235 (Barker) Conditional release of terminally ill prisoners

• SB 1334 (Puckett) Increases fees for COPN applications

• SB 1389 (Stolle) Development of a Patient Compensation Fund for medical malpractice cases

• SB 1497 (Barker) Virginia Network for Geospatial Health Research Authority

• SJ 292 (Martin) Study of the Commonwealth funding cancer research centers

If you have questions, contact Don Gehring (dcgehrin@vcu.edu) or Mark Smith (mesmith@vcu.edu). Our office phone number is: 804-828-1235.