Hi, good evening.

It's Mayor Gaskin.

Hi, Mayor Gaskins.

Good evening.

Do we?

So I am still in the car, unfortunately.

I can't see everyone.

Do we uh have Councilman Kirk McPike?

He's absolutely here.

Wonderful.

Well, then I am going to turn it over to Councilman McPyke to uh kick us off and to facilitate the meeting.

Thank you, uh Mayor Gaskins for this uh confidence in me.

I will try not to train wreck the entire meeting.

Um don't mess it up before you leave us.

But I will I will take that.

Uh if I'm facilitating the meeting, does that mean the mayor needs to move the minutes approval?

Probably.

Yeah.

So could I get a motion to approve the minutes of the uh last meeting of the legislative subcommittee?

So moved.

Second.

Um all in favor.

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

The meetings are approved.

Uh uh, Dr.

Ginsberg, would you like to give us your um uh update on the events of the last week?

Sure.

Um thanks, Councilwoman McPike and Mayor Gaskins.

Um I just want to start by saying thank you to everybody on this call for doing lots of work as I send you rush requests for information on bills.

I really appreciate it.

Um just so you know some of the things that have been going on in Richmond this past week.

I wanted to give you an update on a couple of bills.

One is the Faith in Housing Bill.

Um, and we've been doing a lot of work negotiating with our uh with other stakeholders and the patron on this bill.

This bill would allow for basically the the buyright development of housing on um certain uh on uh property that's owned by religious organizations or certain qualifying nonprofit entities.

Um we've worked closely with patrons in both the House and Senate on this bill as well as stakeholders.

Um and so uh we got our amendments in there and uh both version or uh it was considered in cities or county cities and towns subcommittee this week on Thursday morning, and we testified in support of the bill.

And ultimately the bill was amended to add an enactment clause, which means that the House and Senate versions are not gonna match in the end.

It's gonna slow down whether this bill can actually get enacted.

Um I talked with one of the stakeholder groups today.

They're gonna send us potentially uh follow-up language on this to see if we can come to a deal and keep moving forward on this faith in housing bill.

Um, but it looks like it might be hitting a little bit of a bumpy road right now.

Um the second thing I wanna pick up on is the mask related bills.

Now, these are the bills related to whether um immigration enforcement can wear masks um when they're performing their duties.

Uh the city testified in support of Senator Salim's bill, SB 352.

Um, after the patron worked with us really hard to make sure that APD and the rest of the city were comfortable with some of the uh prescriptive restrictions that have been placed on them.

So one of the things we might want to do this meeting is change from officially change our position from uh watch to support uh to make sure that we do support this bill because of all the amendments that have been made to it.

Um so we we did already testify in support of this bill because they made amendments that allowed for undercover officers to wear masks when they were needing to wear masks.

Um they made it so that if it's really cold below 32 degrees, you could wear a mask, and they made other amendments as well.

And they also struck a sovereign immunity clause that was problematic for other uh other um cities and localities as well.

So that bill um actually got out of uh out of committee, and uh we're watching that bill and its uh House counterparts as well.

And the House and Senate counterparts are cognates, so they're gonna make sure that they match up as they move through um between the chambers and they go to crossover when the House bills go to the Senate and the Senate bills go to the House.

Uh the next one I want to talk about is uh skill games.

Uh there's House and Senate bills on skill games.

Now, these bills actually would regulate skill games in the state.

So we outright oppose them and we made that clear to the patrons because our legislative direction is that we we just oppose skill games altogether.

Uh on the House side, the bill hasn't moved yet, but on the Senate side, SB661 was amended this week, but not in a way that would satisfy the fact that we just don't want skill games going on in the Commonwealth.

Um when SB661 was considered in uh the Senate General Laws and Technology Committee, uh the city provided written testimony to the members from um Councilman uh Guray, who talked about uh a member of the city who was actually using these skill games, and he found he wasn't even making money when he was he was a business owner and he had these skill games in his business, wasn't making any money, and he actually got arrested for using the illegal skill games, even though he thought he was using the the legal ones.