The Virginia General Assembly recessed its 2018 legislative session Saturday afternoon. In total, a record 3,722 bills were introduced this session. At crossover, the VMA was working 94 priority and defensive priority bills. At the end of the session, the VMA won 83% of its priority bills and 91% of its defensive priority bills.

Unfortunately, the General Assembly could not come to agreement on its budget and recessed without amendments to this year's budget or adopting the new 2018-2020 biennium budget. The Governor will now have to call a Special Session of the Virginia General Assembly to deal with the budget and judicial appointments sometime before June 30, 2018.

The primary issue in the budget negotiations will be the state expansion of Medicaid to nearly 400,000 low-income Virginians. The dispute over this expansion, which is entirely dependent upon Federal subsidies for the next three years, has been widely debated and some have begun to doubt the Federal government's ability to sustain state expansions. Numerous studies have been conducted over the last five years trying to ascertain the affordability of such an expansion. In fact, recent studies have even polled Virginians on requiring Medicaid recipients to work in order to receive the expanded benefits. Regardless, legislators are going back to their districts to listen to constituents and advocates about how to provide this $325 million in new spending without taking from other state priorities such as education, highways and public safety.

The VMA 2018 Legislative Wrap-Up Report will be published soon. It will give members a comprehensive analysis of the proposed budget and all bills affecting industrial businesses this session. We will specifically highlight those priority bills that will improve Virginia's competitiveness and defensive bills that will require further attention throughout the year.