Animal Cruelty Conviction List established. Requires the Superintendent of State Police to establish no later than January 1, 2028, and to maintain an Animal Cruelty Conviction List (List) and to make the List publicly available on the Department of State Police's website. The bill specifies that the List include the names of persons convicted of certain felony animal cruelty offenses on or after July 1, 2025. The bill requires persons convicted of any such offense to pay a fee of $50 per conviction to fund the maintenance of the List. The bill also requires the Department to remove a person's name and information from the List 15 years after its listing if he has no additional felony conviction for any such offense.
Board of Wildlife Resources; creel limits; blue catfish. Requires the Board of Wildlife Resources to amend regulations to remove the one-fish daily limit for blue catfish longer than 32 inches in Lake Gaston, Kerr Reservoir, and the James, Rappahannock, and York Rivers and their tributaries below the fall line.
Public institutions of higher education; endowments; investment management; certain divestment practices prohibited. Prohibits any public institution of higher education or any affiliated foundation, investment management company, or other entity that is responsible for managing or investing endowment funds of the institution from establishing or implementing any policy or practice of divesting from all investments in any country or territory that is not the subject of an active sanctions program administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Possession, sale, transfer, or breeding of nonhuman primates prohibited; penalties. Prohibits the possession, sale, transfer, or breeding of nonhuman primates and controls the ownership of such primates already in the Commonwealth. The bill exempts from the prohibition certain institutions, qualified transporters passing through the Commonwealth, those in possession of a state or federal exhibitor's license, and those in lawful possession of a nonhuman primate prior to July 1, 2026, subject to certain conditions. The bill also provides a procedure for the seizure of a primate in certain circumstances. Any violation of the provisions of the bill is a Class 1 misdemeanor or, for a willful act or omission in the care, control, or containment of a nonhuman primate, a Class 6 felony.
A BILL to amend and reenact § 59.1-200, as it is currently effective and as it shall become effective, of the Code of Virginia and to amend the Code of Virginia by adding in Title 59.1 a chapter numbered 58, consisting of sections numbered 59.1-607 through 59.1-610, relating to Fair Voice Purchasing Act established; penalties.
Land preservation tax credit; maximum amount increase. Increases from $75 million to $100 million, beginning in 2025, the maximum amount of land preservation tax credits that may be issued in a calendar year and adjusts such amount each year for inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. The bill also requires the Governor to submit a recommended appropriation each year in the Budget Bill, or as amendments to the general appropriations act, from the General Fund in an amount equal to the difference between the inflation adjusted annual credit cap and $100 million, but not more than $25 million, for purposes described in the bill.
Discovery; electronic means; report. Requires all attorneys for the Commonwealth to provide discovery materials for all courts to counsel of record for the accused by electronic means unless such materials are prohibited from being distributed by law or impossible to provide by electronic means. The bill directs the Supreme Court of Virginia to promulgate rules to implement this provision by July 1, 2027. The bill has a delayed effective date of January 1, 2028. The bill also requires the Executive Secretary of the Compensation Board, or a designee, to convene a work group to determine the costs associated with any changes in operations and technology infrastructure necessary to implement the provisions of the bill. The bill requires the Executive Secretary of the Compensation Board to provide an interim report to the General Assembly by November 30, 2025, and a final report to the General Assembly by August 1, 2026.
Home instruction; parents; criteria. Removes the four enumerated criteria—holding a high school diploma, being a teacher of qualifications prescribed by the Board of Education, providing the child with a program of study or curriculum that may be delivered through a correspondence course or distance learning program or in any other manner, or providing evidence of the ability to provide an adequate education for the child—by which a parent is permitted to provide home instruction for his school-age child. The bill does not affect the requirement for such a parent to annually provide a description of the home instruction curriculum before the school year begins and evidence of the child's academic progress after the school year ends.
Traffic control device and traffic light signal violation monitoring systems; issuance of summons. Increases from 10 business days to 30 business days the deadline for a locality to execute a summons for a traffic control device or traffic light signal violation enforced by a violation monitoring system.
Short-term rentals; compliance; civil penalty. Authorizes localities to notify an accommodations intermediary that a short-term rental on its platform is not lawfully authorized to be offered on its platform. The accommodations intermediary shall remove any such listing from its platform within seven days of receiving notice and shall provide a refund to any customer reserving such listing. Under the bill, any accommodations intermediary who does not remove such a listing from its platform shall be subject to a civil penalty of $1,000, to be paid into the Virginia Housing Trust Fund. Any such listing required to be removed shall remain unlisted until the accommodations intermediary has been notified by the locality that the short-term rental has been brought into compliance. Once the locality determines that a delisted short-term rental has been brought into compliance, the locality shall have seven days to notify the accommodations intermediary of the change in status.
Commercial use of public places; civil penalty. Allows cities and towns by ordinance to establish a uniform schedule of civil penalties for commercial use of a street, avenue, park, bridge, or any other public place or public property or any public easement of a city or town, in a manner not permitted to the general public, without having first legally obtained the consent of the city or town. The bill provides that the schedule of civil penalties shall be uniform for each type of specified violation, and the penalty for any one violation, unless elsewhere authorized, shall not exceed (i) $500 for the initial violation, (ii) $1,000 for the second violation, or (iii) $1,500 for the third or subsequent violation.
Wage garnishment; state tax debt. Removes the exclusion for state tax debt from limitations on the total amount of wages that may be garnished per pay period.
