GOVERNOR'S VETO

Pursuant to Article V, Section 6, of the Constitution of Virginia, I veto Senate Bill 250, which increases the annual fees for nonhazardous solid waste management facilities and indexes the fees annually based on the change in the Consumer Price Index.

While this legislation has the important goal of providing funding for the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) nonhazardous solid waste management program, it increases the cost of doing business in Virginia with pass-through costs to consumers. The bill was necessitated after prior administrations borrowed money from other DEQ funds over an eight year period to pay for management of the nonhazardous solid waste management program.

Additionally, this legislation indexes fees annually based on the change to the Consumer Price Index, which increased 7.5 percent from January 2021 to January 2022, the largest 12-month increase since the period ending February 1982.

The burden of increased costs this would place on Virginians is too great, especially given the record budget surpluses of the Commonwealth and the accelerated inflation that everyday Virginians are experiencing. And I will not raise fees simply to erase eight years of mismanagement by prior administrations.

Accordingly, I veto this bill.