Labor and Commerce

Tuesday, January 27, 2026·1h 21m·▶ Watch / Listen

The Virginia Labor and Commerce Committee advanced a sweeping set of labor and energy bills, including expanded paid sick leave, minimum wage coverage for farm workers, and domestic worker overtime protections, while also receiving storm outage updates from Dominion Energy, Appalachian Power, and electric cooperatives following a winter weather event.

Key Actions

·Winter Weather Update – Electric Utility Storm PresentationsNo Vote

+ 12 more actions

Controversies

HB84 — Whether large energy users are excluded from PJM reporting requirements

Delegate Weber raised that large energy users also have a vote and a weighted vote in the PJM process and asked whether anyone else besides co-ops was being excluded from the bill's requirements. Delegate Sullivan responded that the answer is no, there is no one else being left out.

+ 4 more controversies

Notable Quotes

“Rolling blackouts are a tool. They are the last resort tool at Dominion Energy Virginia. We have not done that since the mid-1990s. We have no intent of doing it now. We look at every other thing that you can do to maintain reliability.”
Bill Murray, on behalf of Dominion Energy — Delegate Williams asked whether there were any concerns about rolling blackouts because of the grid load during the winter weather event.

+ 2 more quotes

Votes

Strike HB827 from the docketPassed

Report HB5 with amendments and refer to AppropriationsPassed

Report HB20 and refer to Appropriations (initial vote)Passed

Report HB20 and refer to Appropriations (revote after recall)Passed

Report HB27 with amendmentsPassed

Report HB130 and refer to AppropriationsPassed

Report HB238 with substitutePassed

Report HB312 with substitutePassed

Report HB339 with substitutePassed

Report HB426 with amendmentsPassed

Report Uninsured Employers Fund bill (no bill number stated)Passed

Report HB84 with substituteNo Vote

Report HB114 with substitutePassed

Report HB120 with substitute and refer to AppropriationsPassed

Report HB434 with substitutePassed

Report HB492 as amendedPassed

Report HB562Passed

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TranscriptPreview

I will now call to order the Committee on Labor and Commerce. Clerk should open the rolls so we could take attendance. And the clerk shall close the row. We have a quorum. Okay, we're going to start today. We have a special presentation. First of all we winter weather updates from the electric utilities and Cooperatives have a short presentation. I think you have some handouts. Also Madam Chair Bill Murray on behalf of Dominion Energy. I'll just be very brief. We got a presentation. We can email the committee. But we have completed restoration this weekend. If you check our outage map, you may see a couple hundred outages today, some in North Carolina. Those are things happening today, traffic accidents, things like that. It's nothing to do. Winter storm. We had about 58,000 outages. We easily could add five or six times that number. It stayed a little colder than we had forecast which meant we got sleet instead of frozen rain, which is much better for the system. But folks worked around the weekend to get power restored. The rest of the week we came near an all time peak. Did not hit an all time…

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