Comstock for Delegate

Key Reconvene Issues

Budget Amendment - General Assembly Endorses Commonwealth WMATA Board Representation. Both houses of the Virginia General Assembly passed an amendment to the state biennial budget authorizing the Governor to appoint a representative to the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission (NVTC), and for the NVTC to include that appointee as one of its principal representatives on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (WMATA) Board of Directors. The Governor is committed to appointing someone from Northern Virginia with professional transportation experience for this position.

In February, the House passed a bill, with my support, that would have done the same thing. However, the bill was killed in the Senate Finance Committee at the behest of several Northern Virginia Senators and local governments. Enactment of this legislation is consistent with the Greater Washington Board of Trade, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, and Joint WMATA Governance Task Force recommendation that Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia should exercise greater oversight of WMATA's $2 billion operation. It is important that the state has a representative on the Metro Board representing the state's interests and monitoring the $130 million a year we are providing Metro.

HB 1459 - Medical Malpractice Caps. The Governor vetoed this bill, which would raise the medical malpractice cap for doctors, but the veto was overridden in the House and the Senate. I voted against the bill during the legislative session, and I also supported the Governor's veto last week. This bill will now increase the cap from $2 million to $3 million over the next 20 years by increments of $50,000 each year. I voted against this measure because I agree with the Governor that Virginia currently has a climate that has effectively stabilized malpractice premiums and attracted health care service providers to the Commonwealth. Virginia's $2 million cap is the highest all-encompassing cap in the nation, and was last raised in 2008.

Budget Amendment - Allocation of Funding for Commercialization and Research. I joined 97 of my colleagues in voting against this amendment, which would have shifted $2 million dollars from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Matching Program to the Commonwealth Research and Commercialization Fund (CRCF). In our original budget we put the money into the SBIR fund because the fund is critical to Virginia's efforts to compete for 21st century jobs. It is the largest innovation program in the United States, which offers competition-based awards to stimulate technological innovation among small private-sector businesses.

HB 2467 - Health Insurance Coverage for Autism Spectrum Disorder. During the legislative session we passed a bill that will require health insurance companies to provide coverage for the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and treatment for children ages 2-6. The treatment is subject to an annual maximum of $35,000 coverage for applied behavior analysis. The Governor made five amendments to the bill, four of which were agreed to with strong bipartisan support; however, we rejected the fifth because it would have allowed the requirement to expire if the provision limiting the annual benefit to a maximum of $35,000 is invalidated by state or federal law or by a court of competent jurisdiction.