The 2024 legislative session will start in two weeks and, in advance, the Arlington County Board and local delegates and senators have hammered out their shared priorities for the session.

A week and a half ago, Board members approved its package of legislative priorities for the 60-day session, including two new additions.

One wording change might signal the Board’s interest in tackling the use of gas-powered leaf blowers. “Landscaping equipment” was added to a county climate goal to encourage “private sector efforts to support and regulate energy efficiency incentive and climate programs.”

The Board also added a push for sustained funding for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. Legislators expressed their sympathy for this request but noted historical issues with adding dollars to the program, which has already seen an uptick in staffing expenses as a result of previous expansions.

Overall, the priorities of the County Board boil down to fully funded commitments to local governments, respect for local authority and workforce resiliency. This last priority could look like streamlining the process for hiring people in the public safety, mental health and childcare sectors through paid internships, student loan repayment programs or changes to clinical supervision hours.

“These are areas where we have acute shortages in the county,” Board Chair Christian Dorsey said in a meeting last month with legislators. “[We need to be] getting out of this idea we compete with all other jurisdictions for these personnel, we really need to have every boat lifted with everybody’s needs… met.”

Fully funding mandates, meanwhile, could look like more staffing support for jail diversion efforts and body-worn camera programs. Respect for local authority would look like ensuring zoning and land-use decisions remain at the local level.

Other county priorities include:

• increased investments in affordable housing
• better consumer protections for those who have their cars towed
• authority and support for transitioning unused offices into childcare or other community uses
• increased penalties for the sale of vaping products to minors as well as the authority to prohibit vape shops near schools
• the ability to regulate tree canopy coverage

Delegates Alfonso Lopez and Patrick Hope, Delegate-Elect Adele McClure, and Senators Adam Ebbin and Barbara Favola told the Board they are working on legislation for some of these priorities. Their pre-filing deadline is Jan. 10, 2024, the same date the legislative session begins.

Favola and Lopez are in talks with Arlington Public Schools about a bill allowing the prohibition of vape shops near schools, while Ebbin and Hope aim to set up licensing requirements for vape shops. Favola has prefiled a bill that would allow childcare centers to operate in unused offices.

Top of mind for local legislators, meanwhile, is enshrining the possibly imperiled civil liberties of abortion, voting rights and same-sex marriage in the state constitution.

Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled abortion should be a decision made by the state, a ruling that some advocates predict could jeopardize the court decision that legalized same-sex marriage. After the Dobbs abortion decision, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin tried, unsuccessfully, to rally voters around a 15-week limit this election.

A recent lawsuit over redistricting in Arkansas, meanwhile, has possibly teed up voting rights for Supreme Court review.

In response, Favola filed a constitutional amendment on abortion that includes no gestational limits and makes exceptions only for a “compelling state interest.”

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