RICHMOND, Va. -- State lawmakers will return to Richmond on Wednesday for a shorter General Assembly session than last year.
"As we head into 2023, we got a lot to do," Governor Glenn Youngkin said.
Along with individual legislation, lawmakers in Richmond will also be looking at Youngkin's proposed amendments to the state's two-year budget.
Last month, Youngkin proposed $1 billion in tax cuts while saying a roughly $3.6 billion budget surplus will allow for more funding in education, public safety and mental health.
"I've asked for $230 million of investment to expand capacity. It's more than it's ever been invested incrementally in behavioral health," Youngkin said.
Republicans, who are in control of the House, have voiced support for the governor's proposal and Speaker Todd Gilbert added that among his party's goals for 2023 are eliminating the local portion of the grocery tax and giving parents more of a say in their children's education.
"Anything we can do to give parents more power, more control, more inputs and make the schools more accountable to them. I think it's something that the majority of our Republican House caucus would like to see," Gilbert said.
Meanwhile, Democrats, who have a slim majority in the Senate, released joint priorities with the House, calling it Vision For Virginia. These plans include things like continuing to increase the minimum wage, protections for the LGBTQ+ community and keeping Virginia in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
"And of course, there are a lot of other issues dealing with criminal justice reform, getting somebody's guns off the street, cutting down on the violence," State Senator L. Louise Lucas, the Virginia Senate's President pro tempore, said.
Both sides said they see compromise in some areas, including mental health, addressing COVID-19 learning loss, workforce development and pay increases for professions like police and teachers.
"All those things seem to be a place where we routinely land on trying to find bipartisan solutions," Gilbert said.
However, an area where there will likely be no cooperation is abortion access, as Republicans and Youngkin have spoken of a 15-week ban while Democrats said they will keep the current law, allowing abortions through the second trimester and in the third in some circumstances.
While the session starts on Wednesday, not all lawmakers' seats are taken as there is a special election on Tuesday. Two seats in the House, one previously held by a Democrat and one previously held by a Republican, and one in the Senate that was previously held by a Republican.
In November, all 140 seats will be up for election under the newly-redistricted maps.
