WASHINGTON — With new tolls in Northern Virginia being a hot-button issue in the General Assembly, the busy House Transportation Committee had to seriously consider what would happen if directly opposing measures were passed and signed into law.
The committee is dealing with many bills related to rules or bans on new tolls, including for Interstate 66 inside the Beltway.
While discussing two of the measures that were eventually pulled to be merged together, Del. Greg Habeeb said his subcommittee was “embarrassed” by the fact they reported conflicting bills out to the full committee.
“Not super embarrassed, just kind of concerned as to how that happened so … if you voted for the last one and you vote for this one, then ‘good luck explaining that,'” he said.
“Staff seems to be concerned that this bill and the one that we just reported before are diametrically opposite conflicting bills and we’re nonetheless reporting them both out. I think that would be a problem if we sent them both to the governor’s desk and he signed both of them, but I think there wouldn’t be any procedural obstacle to reporting both right now,” he told the committee.
The committee lawyer said that if two bills amending the same code subsection were to become law, the last one signed by the governor would be the one to take effect.
Habeeb pointed out to the committee that there is “plenty of time to make a final decision before the [conflicting bills could] become law.”
