On Friday, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed 45 bills into law, including legislation extending driver’s license validity for military deployments, and establishing law enforcement training to recognize signs of human trafficking.
“We are here to provide solutions to the problems that matter to Virginians and we are working every day to serve our parents and students, veterans and law enforcement,” said Youngkin. “I thank these bipartisan legislators for their ability to find common sense solutions for their constituents and the commonwealth.”
The bill extending the validity of driver’s licenses to accommodate for military deployments was sponsored by Del. Danica Roem.
“HB 540 is an agency bill from the DMV that extends from three years, to six years the period for which a driver’s license extension may be granted to certain persons in service to the United States government,” said Roem, during a legislative session.
HB 283 & SB 467, sponsored by Del. Emily Brewer and Sen. Jill Vogel, creates training standards for law enforcement that would help prevent, recognize and report human trafficking. During a legislative session, Del. Marcus B. Simon said the bill did not go far enough.
“I’m certainly not going to encourage anybody not to vote for this bill,” Simon said. “I think that it’s important we address human trafficking in our standards. I would suggest that this bill is a missed opportunity.”
Simon stated that some of the training outlined in the bill is already a requirement for law enforcement.
“We’ve already got a requirement that they have sensitivity and awareness of human trafficking offenses,” Simon said.
He suggested the training be extended to school resource officers.
“We think they ought to be trained to recognize signs of human trafficking, be sensitive to the problems people that may be victimized by human trafficking have, have a trauma informed training on what these folks are going through and how it might be best to approach them and get to the bottom of these things,” he said.
HB 1019 & SB 444, sponsored by Del. Emily Brewer and Sen. Jennifer Boysko, accelerates broadband deployment across state owned property.
“House Bill 1019 expands existing authority granted to state departments, agencies and institutions. (It) can make easements over property owned by the Commonwealth. By allowing them to convey easements to telecommunication companies, it’ll ease the ability for us to deploy broadband,” said Brewer.