VACo urges continued opposition to HB 1263 (Tran) / SB 378 (Surovell), which would curtail local authority and create substantial local fiscal impact by imposing mandatory collective bargaining for local governments if a group employees petition and vote to form a bargaining unit. The bills would also create a state Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) with no specified local government representation and impose binding arbitration, among other provisions. Furthermore, the bills do not preserve local discretion beyond the expiration of existing collective bargaining agreements, effectively forcing localities into the new state-administered system when current agreements expire.
ACTION REQUESTED
- VACo Members – Contact ALL legislators in the General Assembly (House of Delegates Emails 1 | House of Delegates Emails 2 | Senate of Virginia) to oppose this legislation now.
- Please include VACo in your correspondence and share fiscal and other impacts of the legislation on your locality.
SB 378 passed the Senate on February 17 on a vote of 21-19. HB 1263 passed the House on February 17 on a vote of 61-35. Each bill has slight differences detailed further below, but the most problematic aspects involving local decision making and fiscal impact remain. The bills will likely be heard in each opposing chamber. If the differences in each bill are unable to be reconciled, they will likely be sent to a committee of conference.
KEY POINTS
- Virginia is home to a diverse array of localities with significant variations in population, resources, and administrative capacity. Mandating a uniform collective bargaining framework ignores these differences and places an undue burden on many localities that lack the resources to manage the complexities of collective bargaining agreements.
- Disregard for locally tailored solutions made by democratically elected local representatives disrupts established practices and agreements and creates unnecessary confusion and administrative burden.
- This legislation preempts local governance, introduces fiscal uncertainty, and disregards the progress made by a number of localities and local school divisions under the current framework.
- The estimated local fiscal impact for this legislation is massive. One responding locality has reported a potential fiscal impact exceeding $400 million for that jurisdiction alone.
VACo opposes both bills. Below is a side-by-side comparison.
Topic | SB 378 | HB 1263 |
| PERB Placement | Establishes PERB as an agency in the executive branch. | Establishes PERB as a division of a department. |
| Binding Arbitration | Requires final & binding arbitration for grievances and impasse procedures. More explicit and prescriptive about the use of binding arbitration. A local governing body shall approve or reject the submission as a whole. However, if the governing body rejects the submission of the public employer, either party may reopen negotiations. | Requires final & binding arbitration for grievances and impasse procedures. Leaves more details to regulation. |
| Procedural Impacts | State-run certification/elections and bargaining unit determinations; contact info requirements; enforcement and hearings in localities. | Similar statewide structure; additional home-care provisions expand scope and administrative footprint. |
| Home care / Medicaid Consumer-Directed Providers | Directs the Secretary of Health and Human Resources (along with the Secretary of Labor) to evaluate options for collective bargaining rights for consumer-directed providers in the Medicaid waiver programs. | Creates a Virginia Home Care Authority (VHCA) with extensive responsibilities and “public employer” role for providers. |
| Higher Education | Includes employees of public institutions of higher education from the bill’s collective bargaining framework. | Excludes employees of public institutions of higher education from the bill’s collective bargaining framework. |
| Effective date / transition | Major provisions become effective July 1, 2028, with continuity language for existing representatives and collective bargaining agreements until then. | Requires regulations by July 1, 2028 and pauses certain petition and election activity until regulations are adopted. |
Some other considerations of both bills:
- Eliminates the current “local option” framework and replaces it with a mandatory, state-administered collective bargaining system, regardless of local governing body preferences or capacity.
- Local governments lose existing decision-making authority over labor relations policy and must navigate a new state bureaucracy.
- Creates new procedural timelines and legal standards that local human resources staff, county attorneys, and administrators must meet, regardless of staffing capacity or workload constraints.
- Creates new reporting, documentation, and compliance tracking requirements, increasing administrative overhead for counties without providing state funding to support these mandates.
- PERB’s membership structure does not guarantee any dedicated representation for local governments.
- PERB has enforcement authority to seek court involvement to compel compliance with the statute and PERB orders, exposing counties to new litigation risk and legal costs.
- Binding arbitration creates outcomes with unpredictable fiscal consequences.
- Limits counties’ ability to respond quickly to fiscal downturns, emergencies, or changing service demands, due to contractual and arbitration-driven constraints on staffing, scheduling, and compensation adjustments.
- Most major provisions take effect July 1, 2028, limiting immediate impacts on the next biennial budget, while setting up potentially significant fiscal impacts in future budget cycles.
- Employees of the legislative branch are excluded from coverage under the collective bargaining framework created by the bills.
- For local governments, the two bills still have the same functional impact.
Both curtail the authority of democratically elected local officials, centralize authority at the state level, expand binding arbitration, and expose counties to significant new fiscal and operational risk. VACo urges members to contact the General Assembly to respect the autonomy of local governments and reject this measure.
KEY CONTACTS
VACo Contact: Jeremy R. Bennett