In accordance with Virginia Beach City Code 2-1 and by the authority vested in me as mayor of the city of Virginia Beach.

I hear my call for a special formal session in Virginia Beach Virginia Beach City Council on Tuesday, February 10th, 2026.

So two of the council conference room 2034.

Building one, second floor, 2401 courthouse drive.

The purpose of the special form of session is live city council.

Following its regular schedule, formal session as listed in the agenda.

Publicly held property in district six.

And at the conclusion of their closed session, the city council will reconvene into an open session for the purpose of certifying the closed session.

The special formal session will be broadcast on uh cable TV, Virginia Beach.com and Facebook Live C OE poppy diar.

Welcome one, welcome all.

Mr.

Durhaney, let's go ahead and get started.

So Mr.

Mayor, members of council.

The first briefing will be given by our legislative affairs director, Brett McKenzie, who's joining us live from Richmond.

Give us an overview of all the General Assembly's comings and goings.

Brent, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr.

City Manager, and good afternoon, Mr.

Mayor, members of council.

Um we're entering our fourth week here in the General Assembly.

Uh today, like a few of the other briefings, we're just going to provide a brief status update on our legislative agenda items.

And today we're going to mention some of the items that have fiscal impacts, uh, give you an update on some land use legislation that we've seen some action on over the last week, uh, mostly in a positive manner, and um some legislation that has uh some revenue streams attached to them.

Uh so with that we'll kind of get started here.

Uh just as a quick update or reminder, uh some upcoming milestones.

So next week, February 18th is crossover.

That's the day that each chamber has to complete all of their work on their legislation, and then whatever passes goes over to the other chamber um on February 22nd.

Each chamber will present their budgets, and they have until February 26th to complete uh complete their individual budgets.

Uh, and then the session scheduled to uh uh to end on March 14th, and then we have reconvened session session on April 22nd.

You guys likely saw in the news, I think it was on Friday.

Governor Spamberger signed uh into law four constitutional amendments that will be on the ballot this year.

Uh three of these will be on the ballot in November.

Uh one dealing with reproductive freedom, one be dealing with voting rights restoration, and one dealing with marriage equality.

Uh the fourth one is scheduled to be a special election on April 21st, dealing with congressional redistricting.

If you're following the news at all, you've probably seen a lot of information and news about this.

Um, there's a lot of litigation tied up in this, that it's at the Virginia Supreme Court now.

So they are moving forward with scheduling that election and putting all of the procedural requirements in place uh as the court action plays out.

So our legislative agenda, the things here in bold are the things that are still active.

Uh just a couple of things that have moved since my last briefing.

Our um EMS funding bill, HB 57 from delegate Fagan's uh passed to the House and has been referred to the Senate Transportation Committee.

So that's uh great progress.

Uh HB 390 from delegate ask you dealing with uh some of those permitting issues that we're having.

Um third read today, so should pass the house today and move over to the Senate, and then the Manhattan fishing study.

Um they had divided the bill into two separate two separate bills, one dealing with some of the restrictions they wanted to put on the Manhattan fishery, one dealing with the study.

Um they they've combined certain portions of that, but uh the study part of it is moving forward as uh HB 1049.

Uh that passed committee yesterday, so that was exciting news.

Um, and then unfortunately, uh this past Friday, our pop-up event zone legislation was uh unfortunately not successful in the House County Cities and Towns Committee.

So uh all of the legislation on this screen here, these are things that are you know have a fiscal impact to local governments.

Uh nothing on here.

You've seen everything that's on here before.

We just want to continue to highlight these things for you.

Uh the House version of the collective bargaining legislation is scheduled to be heard in the full uh labor and commerce committee this afternoon, and then we'll get sent over to appropriations.

Um, I guess the one real common theme, as you'll see through the rest of this presentation, is that most of the real heavy legislation is uh through its original committee and has been sent to the money committees.

These are the places where uh most of these decisions get get made in the money committees because they have to uh not only agree with the policy, but they also have to fund many of these things, and so you'll see that on most of the status updates on most of these pieces of legislation is that they're sitting in finance and in appropriations.

So uh that's collective bargaining.

Um, the sovereign immunity legislation from the Senate Majority Leader Scott Surravel.

Uh its initial iteration was uh pretty ambiguous, and we had a lot of questions with what its intent was from our reading of it.

We believe that it only impacted a very small segment of local government employees.

Uh the Senate Majority Leader cleared all of that up by uh dropping a substitute bill in the courts committee uh earlier this week, or I guess it was last week, um, to where it would cover uh basically all local government employees and local government actions, um, looking at the fiscal impact of that, working with the city attorney's office and um our budget folks.

We think it would probably double or triple some of our insurance requirements, uh, probably with the fiscal impact of somewhere between five and six million dollars, and that is uh you know, before there's any sort of uh lawsuits or anything that may be uh come with a from from result from that um sovereign immunity going away.