The Criminal Subcommittee tabled two bills to extend threat protections to social services workers, narrowly advanced a DEQ drone-use bill over Fourth Amendment objections, and unanimously passed three criminal justice reform bills addressing counsel at first appearance, failure-to-appear penalties, and mandatory secured bonds.
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Legislative counsel argued the bill as drafted raised Fourth Amendment privacy concerns because it was not limited to permitted lands and added civil enforcement to a code section previously reserved for criminal law enforcement agencies. DEQ Director Mike Rollband and policy director Brandon Bull argued DEQ's existing right-of-entry provisions in state water control law (Title 62.1, Chapter 3.1) already require consent or a warrant for unpermitted sites and would continue to apply; counsel responded that a policy is not the same as a statutory requirement. A committee member identified as 'Delegate Schultz' [UNCLEAR SPELLING] warned that approving drone use for efficiency would open the door to other agencies making similar requests, eroding Virginia's warrant standard.
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“I can tell you, anybody wants to look me up, they can, they can Google and they can find me. So when they decide to threaten me, I take it very serious. Especially when they threaten me and then they want to threaten my wife.”
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Sign in to subscribeClerk, student, House, we'll try this one more time. I'm going to get it right at the end. I know. House Courts Criminal Law subcommittee will come to order. Clerk, please take the open the roll. Members, cast your vote, indicate your presence. And we have been having problems with the machine all afternoon. And it doesn't appear to be working. Again saying to the audience, we've had having problems with our recorded votes all afternoon, so we probably will have to take voice votes. But I do see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, which is a quorum of 10. So I will call the meeting to order. Given all the conflicts that we've had with that. I see two individuals who are here as patrons who have similar bills and I have both on HB 1286. I have delegate Walker and then I also have HB 1159. Cherry, which one of you would like to go first? All right, Delegate Walker, this is a real gentleman here. So, All right, let's get down to this. So, Madam chair, I have HB 1286 today. And so this came to me from a constituent in Lynchburg after a real situation…
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