Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy

Broadband service; prescriptive easements. Provides that if a public service company has acquired a prescriptive easement pursuant to which it has the right to poles and wires to provide electric service, its rights under that prescriptive easement shall be deemed to include the right to grant to a provider of broadband or other telecommunications services the rights to attach its wires and facilities to the public service company's poles and to enter upon the right-of-way to install and maintain the wires and facilities without the approval of the owner of the servient tract of land.

Campaign finance; prohibited contributions tocandidates. Prohibits any candidate from soliciting or acceptinga contribution from any public service corporation, as defined in§ 56-1, or any political action committee established and administeredby such a corporation.

Bail; data collection and reporting standards;report. Requires the Department of Criminal Justice Servicesto (i) collect data relating to bail determinations for any personwho is held in custody pending trial or hearing for an offense, civilor criminal contempt or otherwise, in every locality; (ii) createa uniform reporting mechanism for criminal justice agencies to submitsuch data; and (iii) submit an annual report on the data collectedto the Governor and the General Assembly, as well as publish the annual report on the Department's website. The bill also providesthat the law addressing bail is to be construed so as to give effectto a general presumption in favor of pretrial release. The bill alsorequires the Department to report to the House Committee for Courtsof Justice by January 1, 2021, on the development and applicationof the uniform reporting mechanisms. The bill has a delayed effectivedate of July 1, 2021, for provisions related to the creation of uniform reporting mechanisms and data collection by the Department.

War memorials for veterans. Removes a prohibition on (i) disturbing or interfering with any war monument or memorial erected by a locality or (ii) preventing citizens from maintaining such monument or memorial. The bill authorizes a locality to remove, relocate, or alter any such monument or memorial on the locality's public property upon the affirmative vote of its governing body, regardless of when the monument or memorial was erected, and removes certain criminal and civil penalties for such removal, relocation, or alteration. The bill also restricts bringing a cause of action pursuant to such penalties to the attorney for the locality in which the memorial or monument is located. Current law authorizes any person having an interest in the matter to bring such action if no action is brought within 60 days of the violation. The bill repeals an 1890 act of assembly related to the placement of a statue in the City of Alexandria. This bill was incorporated into HB 1537.

General Assembly meetings; streaming and recording. Requires the Clerk of the House of Delegates and the Clerk of theSenate to ensure that every (i) subcommittee or committee meetingof a standing committee of the General Assembly, regardless of meetingdate, and (ii) floor session of the House of Delegates or the Senate,including any joint session of the houses, is streamed with closedcaptioning, recorded and archived. The bill defines "stream" and specifiesthat a qualifying meeting is one the date and time of which havebeen scheduled on a public website of any agency of the General Assemblyfor at least one hour prior to the meeting and that takes place inthe State Capitol, the Pocahontas Building, or the General AssemblyBuilding in Richmond. The bill has a delayed effective date of October1, 2020.

Possession of marijuana. Allows for possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use.

Flood Insurance Fund; low-income Virginians.Creates a Flood Insurance Fund and directs the Executive Director of the Board of Directors of the Virginia Resources Authority toestablish a program to use the Fund to subsidize the purchase offlood insurance by low-income Virginians. Such program shall includean application process, application guidelines, and a ranking systemthat prioritizes the use of the Fund to support the purchase of floodinsurance in the most flood-prone areas.

Distributed renewable energy. Promotes the establishment of distributed renewable solar and other renewable energy. The measure (i) removes the one percent cap on the total amount of renewable energy that can be net metered in a utility's service territory, (ii) authorizes third-party power purchase agreements for all customer classes throughout the Commonwealth, (iii) allows local governments and certain other public bodies to install solar or wind facilities of up to five megawatts on government-owned property and use the electricity for government-owned buildings, (iv) allows all net metering customers to attribute output from a single solar array to multiple meters, (v) allows the owner of a multifamily residential building or the common areas of a condominium to install a renewable energy generation facility and sell the electricity to tenants or condominium unit owners, (vi) removes the restriction on customers installing a net-metered generation facility larger than that required to meet their previous 12 months' demand, (vii) raises the cap for net-metered nonresidential generation facilities from one megawatt to two megawatts, and (viii) removes the ability of utilities to assess standby charges. The measure also amends the Commonwealth Energy Policy to include provisions supporting distributed generation of renewable energy.

Virginia Diverse Educator Scholarship Fund and Programestablished. Establishes the Virginia Diverse Educator Scholarship Fund andProgram, to be administered by the State Council of Higher Education forVirginia, for the purpose of annually providing to each Historically BlackCollege or University in the Commonwealth (Hampton University, Norfolk StateUniversity, Virginia State University, and Virginia Union University) such sumsas are necessary for each such institution to annually provide scholarships ona competitive basis to no more than two students who (i) identify as AfricanAmerican, Asian, Hispanic or Latino, Native American or Native Alaskan, orNative Hawaiian or Pacific Islander; (ii) are accepted to or enrolled in suchinstitution's education preparation program; and (iii) are eligible for afederal Pell Grant to attend such institution. The bill provides that each suchscholarship would consist of the following sums: (a) the cost of tuition,mandatory fees, room and board, and textbooks at such institution; (b) therecipient's teacher licensure fees; (c) $5,000 toward teacher professionaldevelopment activities for the recipient, including coursework, seminars, andconferences; and (d) $10,000 toward mentorship of the recipient by anexperienced teacher who is deemed by the relevant school board to be highlyeffective and able to provide high quality mentorship. The bill requires eachstudent who is awarded a scholarship pursuant to the Program to agree inwriting to (1) teach in a public elementary or secondary school in theCommonwealth in which at least half of the enrolled students qualify for freeor reduced price lunch or are members of families whose income is below the federalpoverty guidelines established by the U.S. Department of Health and HumanServices upon graduation for a period that is at least as long as the periodduring which the recipient used scholarship funds to attend a HistoricallyBlack College or University and (2) be mentored by an experienced teacher, asdescribed in clause (d), during such period of employment.

Presidential electors; National Popular Vote Compact. Enters Virginia into an interstate compact known as the Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote. Article II of the Constitution of the United States gives the states exclusive and plenary authority to decide the manner of awarding their electoral votes. Under the compact, Virginia agrees to award its electoral votes to the presidential ticket that receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The compact goes into effect when states cumulatively possessing a majority of the electoral votes have joined the compact. A state may withdraw from the compact; however, a withdrawal occurring within six months of the end of a President's term shall not become effective until a President or Vice President has qualified to serve the next term. This bill was incorporated into HB 177.