RICHMOND, Va. — Lawmakers met Wednesday for a constitutionally-mandated start to the 2025 General Assembly session.
However, the meeting was shorter than normal because of the city's ongoing water issues.
Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears says she stays in the city and they had some water but is now at a hotel in Henrico with her mother visiting from Jamaica.
"She's here and she's thinking, 'You have to boil water in America?' From a third world country, so it's interesting," Earle-Sears said. "The last time I had these type of conditions, I was in the Marine Corps, and you know, it's awful."
Aside from passing a few procedural motions, lawmakers soon recessed until Monday.
Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) says the lack of drinking water was the main reason for choosing to do this.
"You got the public coming in to visit and do things and we would hate for someone to get ill because they drank some water that was not safe," Scott said.
Meanwhile, Richmond Delegate Mike Jones (D-Richmond) says the incident should serve as a eye-opener to state lawmakers about providing more support to localities like Richmond to deal with aging infrastructure.
"The city has got to put together a plan. They have to have a good understanding of what they need and where they need, where they chart their course forward, and then we have to find those dollars at the state," Jones said.
Jones, a former Richmond council member, says one specific issue he'd like to see addressed is the amount of state property in the city -- which can't be taxed. Instead the state gives what are called payments in lieu of taxes -- but Jones says those don't match market values.
"When I was on city council, because we were only getting two to $3 million from that, where we should be getting, in my estimation, between $15 to $20 million annually," Jones said.
However, Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle (R-Hanover) also impacted by the water outage says the city and others have gotten money in the past and wants to see how it's been spent before signing off on more.
"We need to look and see where those dollars are going, whether they were spent responsibly, and if we need to take steps to make sure when a locality gets resources, they're putting them where it will help all people in the community," McDougle said.
While Scott says other localities also have to deal with the non-taxable state land issue as well, and adds when it comes to more support, he wants to see more on the root causes of outage.
"We're not sure this was all a money problem," Scott said. "This could have been a some some human error involved as well. So I don't ever want to assume that it's just equipment when a situation like this, but we're going to wait for the after action report."
While lawmakers will wait for that and for session to resume a few days late, they don't anticipate it will impact their planned work.
"We're not slowing down at all. We plan to get the job done in the 45 days that the Constitution prescribes," McDougle said.
"I think we're gonna be able to get all of our work done on time. You know, thankfully. Sometimes might have to work on the weekend," Scott said.
Along with the start of the legislative work, this delay also meant the governor’s state of the Commonwealth address has been delayed, which normally would’ve been Wednesday afternoon. That has now been moved to Monday at 9:30 a.m.
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