February 13, 2024
The 2024 General Assembly has reached its "Crossover" mid-point of the 2024 Session, when all House legislation must clear the House and all Senate legislation must clear the Senate. After midnight on Tuesday, February 13, each house may only consider legislation that made it over from the other body. With this key legislative deadline passing, we are happy to report that still no legislation to deregulate opticianry has been introduced in either house.
The next 2024 Session milestone is presentation of the House and Senate budgets, which will occur on Sunday, February 18. Then we will learn about the spending priorities in both houses, as well as of any language amendments that may have been inserted in those documents. Sometimes language can be inserted into the budget that may have nothing to do with any fiscal policy, but is seen as "legislating through the budget". We have no reason to believe anything like this is going to happen with the practice of opticianry, but we are monitoring this process to make sure.
We remain cautiously optimistic that this issue may not arise this Session, mainly because we took the proactive advocacy efforts necessary in advance and brought in competent professionals to help head this off. However, even if we are successful in eventually coming out of the Session unscathed, in the long-term, we will need to take the steps necessary moving forward to bolster our profession and put us in a stronger position in the future to guard against such efforts. We continue to monitor the situation and will keep you informed as the situation merits. Please let us know if you have any questions.
Continued Help is Needed
Stay informed on this and other issues of importance to the profession by checking the website frequently. And if you are not a member, PLEASE JOIN! Every penny of your membership fee goes directly to legislative efforts and protection of your career.
We need your help to have the financial resources to secure and maintain lobbying representation for this action and for continued legislative maintenance to make sure that we continue to protect our profession. If we have learned nothing else from this situation, it is that this step is no longer optional – it is a must for the future of Opticians in Virginia to have ongoing and attentive representation of our profession.
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