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Local government groups fended off they opposed that would give the state a role dictating actions to expand affordable housing.

But a coalition of doctors, hospitals and trial lawyers failed in a bid to derail a that would have erased Virginia’s 26-year-old caps on insurance payments when health care providers’ negligence causes lifelong disabilities in children.

And another coalition of business interests, hospitals and lawyers failed to defeat a that would say employers can be held responsible if an employee sexually assaults a person in the course of work.

Housing bills

In the face of local governments’ opposition and despite support from housing advocates, state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, could not get the Senate Local Government Committee to agree to his proposal that would require local government action to try to boost housing stock by 1.5% a year. The bill failed on an 8-4 vote.

Under the legislation, failure to make a good-faith effort to do that through a variety of options, largely focusing on zoning regulations, would clear the way for the state to step in and approve affordable housing projects.

VanValkenburg said increasing the supply of housing would rein in the soaring rent and house prices that leave many Virginians struggling to afford places to live.

“It’s a soft cap,” VanValkenburg said, noting the bill called for trying to hit the 1.5% target, rather than insisting on actually reaching it.

“We’re facing a housing crisis,” he said.

But, as with measures working their way through the legislature that would give the state authority over where large solar energy facilities are located, cities and counties said the bill forced a one-size-fits-all approach on localities with very different geographies and populations.

Opponents said it would also remove an essential power localities’ voters gave their boards of supervisors and city councils.

“The state shouldn’t force an approach,” said Laura Bateman, from the Virginia First Cities association of several of the state’s oldest and most densely populated cities.

State Sen. Danny Diggs, R-York, said the bill did not make sense for localities that are losing population, as some in Southwest and Southside Virginia have.

“We shouldn’t force localities to have the kind of community they don’t want to have,” he said.

Another VanValkenburg bill, which local governments also opposed, that would require localities to allow multi-family housing in areas zoned for businesses, also failed, this on a 7-5 vote.

Malpractice insurance

But doctors, nurses, hospitals and lawyers did not defeat a bill from state Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin. His measure would say the usual cap on medical malpractice insurance awards should not apply when negligence harms a child under 10.

The Senate Courts of Justice Committee advanced the measure after hearing from Jake Salmons. He said the cap – now $2.65 million – will leave him and his wife, Michele, facing hundreds of thousands of dollars caring for their son Harvey, 14 months old. Salmons said Harvey is suffering from traumatic brain injury and cerebral palsy, after going without oxygen for at least seven minutes during delivery at a hospital.

The cap hits families like his two ways. First, lawyers in these cases routinely take 40% of the award, Stanley said. Then, the family’s health insurer gets first claim on any malpractice award. For Salmons’ family, that includes the $636,000 Anthem has so far paid for Harvey’s care, a $355,000 bill from the hospital and a $160,000 bill from a Chicago rehabilitation hospital that cared for Harvey after his birth.

“I’d estimate that our medical bills are already $1.8 million,” he said. “We’re trying to find the therapy and support and medication he’ll need for the rest of his life.”

He said Michele has given up her job to care for Harvey at home, another financial cost.

Lobbyists for health care interests said Stanley’s bill would force up the cost of insurance.

“For me and other residents this is a major concern,” said Lindsey Gould, an obstetrics resident at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

The cap, in place since 1999, originally came through a compromise between health care interests and the lawyers who file malpractice lawsuits.

“We stand by our word,” Mark Dix, legislative counsel for the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, told the Senate Committee, asking it to defeat the bill.

But the committee approved the bill on an 8-6 vote. It moves now to the Senate Finance Committee.

The committee also rebuffed arguments from chambers of commerce and the hospital association, asking it to kill a proposal from state Sen. Russet Perry, D-Loudoun, under which victims of a sexual assault could sue an employer for damages if an employee committed the assault in the workplace or in the course of work.

Virginia Supreme Court decisions in 2018 and 2019 set a tougher test for suing such employers. Under the bill an older standard, which still allows employers to defend themselves, would apply.

Richmond attorney Craig Curwood told the committee that the new Supreme Court standard blocked a client from suing a Prince William County hospital after a male nurse groped and digitally penetrated her. The nurse lost his license and was sentenced to an eight-year prison term for felony sexual assault.

“This takes us back to pre-2019, and it asks who is in the best position to prevent this kind of harm,” said state Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham, who had joined Perry in support of the bill.

The committee approved the bill 13-1, sending it directly to the full Senate.

Repeated stress injuries

Measures that aimed at breaking a decades-old impasse between business and labor over Virginia’s unique in the nation denial of workers’ compensation benefit for injuries caused by repeated stress died in the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, despite business groups’ backing.

The business groups backed legislation proposed by Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, and state Sen. Chris Head, R-Botetourt, that would reimburse employee medical costs and lost wages for injuries caused by repeated stress — awkward posture on meat-packing plant lines, for instance — if the employee could show the injury was more than 50% due to work.

Instead, the Senate committee voted for a bill that provided workers’ comp coverage but that did not require such a showing. That measure now moves to the Senate Finance Committee.

McDougle said he expected the high cost to the state for its own employees might lead to new interest in the compromise, as would likely opposition to the measure from Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

“I think the concept is very much still out there,” he said.