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Professions-Occupations and Administrative Process Subcommittee

Thursday, January 22, 2026·46m·▶ Watch / Listen

The Professions-Occupations and Administrative Process Subcommittee advanced six bills — covering contractor exam language access, veteran services codification, veteran honor guard funding, a state internship coordinator, procurement rules for disability employers, and veteran burial honors — while carrying over a barber licensure pathway bill to 2027 amid concerns about oversight standards.

Key Actions

·HB 165 – Contractor Exams in Alternative LanguagesPassed

+ 5 more actions

Controversies

Whether barbershops are qualified to certify barber trainee readiness for the state board exam (HB 742)

Natasha Green argued that barbershops are not qualified to certify trainee readiness, that the state board exam has had many recent regulatory changes a person trained outside a regulated school may not know, and that barbers who come to her school have already taken the state board and were not ready for it. Delegate Williams countered that the licensure examination itself serves as the bottom bar for competency and that the bill provides a different workforce certification route.

+ 3 more controversies

Notable Quotes

“I will remind kindly the subcommittee that this made it out of both the House and the Senate last session, but was unfortunately vetoed by the government by the governor, excuse me, despite his own head of dpor, three months later at a Small Business Commission meeting, reporting publicly that such a measure of this would put $15 million or more into the economy.”

Delegate Thomas — Delegate Thomas was making the case for HB 165, which allows certain contractor licensing exams to be taken in languages other than English, by noting that a prior version of the bill passed both chambers before being vetoed.

+ 4 more quotes

Votes

Move to report HB 165Passed
Move to report HB 354Passed
Move to recommend reporting and referring HB 108 to AppropriationsPassed
Move to report HB 54Passed
Move to report HB 460Passed
Move to strike HB 186 from the docket at the request of the patron (re-vote after recording failure)Passed
Yes (6)Delegate Seibold, Delegate Cole, Delegate Callsen, Delegate Guzman, Delegate Fowler, Madam Chair
Absent (1)Delegate Knight
Move to carry HB 742 over to the 2027 sessionPassed
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TranscriptPreview
Good afternoon, everyone. Call to order. The House Committee on General Laws, Professions, Occupations and Administrative Process Subcommittee. So thank you all for being here today. We'll start by taking attendance. If the clerk could open the roll. Please indicate your presence on the voting. Clerk will close the roll and we have a quorum. All right, do we want. Delegate Thomas, Would you like to go ahead? And you have. You have two bills? I do, Madam Chair. All right, if we could start with. Do you want to start with House Bill 165? I'm just going kind of in order of the list. Yes, Madam Chair. That's easy to count. I will. Even for me, I will do that. All right. Go ahead and start when you're ready. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. So the problem that we have in Virginia, and particularly in districts like mine in Northern Virginia, is that we have a lot of rules and certifications that have to be done in English only or only provided in English. But one of the wonderful things about Virginia is we are an incredibly diverse place, particularly in Northern Virginia. We…
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