House General Laws committee reports 25 bills; measures on housing, procurement and licensing advance

The House Committee on General Laws reported 25 bills to further legislative action Tuesday, advancing a mix of consumer-protection, housing, procurement and licensing measures.

Chair opened the meeting, called the roll and said the committee would proceed quickly through a long list of identical and similar bills, grouping unanimous items into a block and taking separate votes where members recorded differing positions. “We have a number of bills that are identical and weare going to put those into a block,” Chair said during the session.

The committee re-referred Senate Bill 877 to Public Safety and passed one item "by for the day." The panel then reported a large block of identical bills out of committee unanimously. Those unanimous items included measures addressing resale-certificate disclosures for common-interest communities; increasing experience requirements for real-estate board membership; reporting duties for the Office of Inspector General related to behavioral health and developmental services; limits on state-agency degree requirements for hiring; clarifications to CPA education requirements; shifting oversight of data governance to the Virginia Information Technologies Agency; a buyer-beware disclosure related to aircraft noise; rules for boxing and wrestling events; a Virginia Housing Development Authority technical advisory group on deed fraud; and multiple measures affecting real-estate licensing and professional pathways. The committee recorded those bills as reporting out by 21 to 0.

Not all identical bills carried unanimous support. The committee reported, with…