The vote count was announced, and for a moment, it looked like Virginia's long-running skill games saga was finally over: Ayes 49, Noes 44. Delegate Hayes of Chesapeake had his win.
Then Delegate Jason McNamara of Roanoke County rose for a parliamentary inquiry.
"This bill appears to create a tax," McNamara told the Speaker. "In which case we need a majority of the people elected. Which would either be 50 or 51, depending on your interpretation."
The Speaker agreed. The bill was a revenue measure. With 99 members seated, it required 50 votes. It had 49. The conference report failed.
Dead on Arrival — Then Back From the Dead
What followed was a scramble that captured the controlled chaos of a legislative body running out of time. Delegate from Fairfax, Delegate Simon, moved to reconsider — then realized she hadn't voted on the prevailing (failing) side and couldn't make the motion. Delegate Webert stepped in, having voted on the prevailing side, and moved reconsideration. The House agreed by voice vote.
Then Hayes got back up.
"One more bite at the apple," he told the chamber. "And as we know, sometimes when the ball is pitched outside, you gotta step to right field. Adjust, adjust, adjust."
On the second vote, SB 661 passed 57-38 — eight more yes votes than the first attempt. The parliamentary crisis had, in a strange way, cleared the room.
The backstory matters here. Virginia enacted a law in 2020 banning skill games, the slot-machine-style devices common in convenience stores and truck stops. Tens of thousands of machines have continued operating illegally in the years since. According to WVTF Radio IQ, Governor Abigail Spanberger is now considering whether to sign the bill. As Hayes framed it to his colleagues during that second vote: "Here's your chance to get rid of 90,000 illegal machines all throughout the Commonwealth."
SB 661 establishes a regulatory framework and sets a 25% tax rate for the devices. Its companion House bill, HB 1272, was less fortunate — it failed on a straight vote, 46-47 with one abstention, and there was no reconsideration. The difference between the two bills came down to one provision: HB 1272's second conference report added towns to the definition of locality, giving them opt-out authority alongside cities and counties. It wasn't enough.
The Jim Crow Argument
If skill games produced the session's most procedurally bizarre moment, the collective bargaining vote produced its most historically charged.
Delegate Kathy Tran of Fairfax stood before the chamber and didn't mince words. "House Bill 1263 removes Virginia's long standing ban on public sector collective bargaining, a relic of Jim Crow implemented when nurses at UVA sought to have a seat at the table," she said.
The history she referenced is real and documented. The struggle of University of Virginia hospital workers against workplace segregation and for better pay in the 1940s led to a 1946 state ban on public sector collective bargaining, according to reporting from VA Dogwood. That ban has stood for nearly eight decades.
HB 1263 would cover approximately 300,000 public sector employees, including teachers, firefighters, and home care workers. The conference report includes all public sector workers and home care workers statewide, though at public universities it covers only service employees. The bill establishes a Public Employee Relations Board and a home care authority, with implementation scheduled to begin July 1.
The legislation would lift a ban affecting roughly 300,000 public sector workers across the Commonwealth, though the bill's specific coverage is structured in tiers. Advocates had pushed for fully inclusive language; the Economic Policy Institute noted earlier in the session that stronger collective bargaining laws would benefit all Virginians.
"Putting That Bond Rating on the Line"
Opponents were ready.
Delegate Carrie Cherry of Colonial Heights came armed with a fiscal argument that cut to the bone. "We have had a triple A bond rating in this state since the 1930s," she told the chamber. "It is my opinion and the opinion of some of the regulators that look at this, that we are putting that bond rating on the line with this bill."
Cherry estimated a price tag of 2 to $300 million for localities she represents, translating to 30 to 40 cents added to the property tax rate — a burden she called unsustainable. She acknowledged the weight of her own prediction: "I hope 10 years from now somebody clips this, throws it back in my face and tells me I was dead wrong on what this bill is going to do. But I don't think I am."
Delegate Chris Oates of Warren County came from a different angle. As a former county supervisor, he argued the bill guts local government authority. "This bill removes the ability for local government to decide what is best," Oates said. "And instead, this legislation replaces it with a suggested regulatory framework with a uniform statewide structure. That's basically a mandate. You've been replaced."
His sharpest line was fiscal: "This bill has $38 million in it to create 300 new state jobs to oversee this $38 million that our communities are starving for that they could use to replace failing infrastructure."
The Exemption Nobody Could Explain
The most unexpectedly pointed exchange of the collective bargaining debate came not from the loudest opponents but from Delegate Webert, who asked Tran a simple question.
Under the bill's exemptions, employees working for the General Assembly itself are excluded from collective bargaining rights. Webert wanted to know why.
Tran's answer was candid about the pragmatics: she said the bill needed "belts and suspenders language" for implementation and encouraged Webert to bring a bill next year to expand coverage. Webert's response, brief and cutting, landed in the room: "I will simply say that if it's good for our localities, it should be good for us, too."
The exchange highlighted a tension that labor advocates had flagged earlier in the session — that carve-outs and phased implementation can undermine the reach of an otherwise transformative bill.
The final vote: HB 1263 passed 62-34. Its Senate companion, SB 378, passed moments later 61-36, with Tran simply urging a yes vote and no further debate.
Casinos, Trees, and a Peaceful Valley
The chamber worked through a dozen other conference reports in the same session, most without drama.
SB 756, the casino gaming eligible host localities bill, passed 55-41 after Delegate Willett of Henrico County walked members through what the second conference committee report was — and wasn't. It essentially reverted to the original Senate version, stripping out guardrails added by House Appropriations, including transparency requirements and a time limit on referendum windows. A casino at Tyson's Corner remains cited in the bill. There is no provision for a temporary casino under the current version.
A pair of tree conservation bills — HB 549 and its Senate cognate SB 589 — passed with comfortable margins (63-34 and 64-33 respectively), expanding locality authority for tree preservation during land development in Planning District 8. The delegate from Arlington presented HB 549 with a piece of institutional philosophy: "The Senate passes bills, the House passes laws. The original bill that we passed, House Bill 549, is the bill that's before you right now."
Delegate Franklin of Montgomery County brought a rare moment of levity with HB 1385, the public university board of visitors governance reform. "I think it's the moment we've been waiting for, or at least I have been," he told the chamber, describing the substitute as achieving "peace in the Valley." The bill — which creates a work group with CHEV and the Attorney General's office, extends board terms, and protects faculty in advisory roles — passed 62-34. Its Senate companion, SB 494, passed 62-35.
A Budget Left Behind
Underneath all of it ran a current of institutional embarrassment: Virginia's House of Delegates was ending its regular session without a budget.
The impasse, which Bloomberg Law reports centers on a dispute over data center tax exemptions, left the two chambers unable to agree before the session's close. The House and Senate passed HJR 316 — unanimously, 95-0 — to carry the budget bill, HB 30, over to a special session. Then they passed HJR 317 — 91-0 — petitioning Governor Spanberger to call that special session on April 23, 2026.
Delegate Herring of Alexandria, who managed the procedural votes, noted the constitutional requirement: both chambers must petition the governor. Delegate Terry Kilgore of Scott County, no stranger to dissent, stood behind Herring. "I agree with the majority leader that we should vote yes," Kilgore said simply. "We need a budget, so vote yes."
The House then adjourned Sine Die — a Latin phrase meaning, with no small irony on this particular evening, "without a day."
What Happens Next
Virginia lawmakers will return to Richmond on April 23 for a special session to resolve the budget standoff. The data center tax exemption fight — which pits House members who say Virginia must honor signed contracts against senators seeking to revisit those breaks — will define that session.
On skill games, the fate of SB 661 now rests with Governor Spanberger. If she signs it, Virginia would establish a long-overdue regulatory structure for the machines and begin the process of clearing tens of thousands of illegal devices from convenience stores and truck stops across the Commonwealth. If she vetoes it, the machines stay illegal — and stay everywhere.
On collective bargaining, HB 1263 and SB 378 have passed both chambers and head to the governor. If Spanberger signs them, roughly 300,000 Virginia public sector workers — teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers, home care aides — would gain the legal right to collectively bargain over their working conditions for the first time. If the bills are vetoed or if implementation stumbles, those workers remain where they've been since 1946: on the outside of the table that Delegate Tran promised them a seat at.