[Nfbv-announce] Blind Parents Bill Fails in House of Delegates

[Tracy Soforenko]

Hi Virginia Federationists

 

Monday, in the Virginia House  of Delegates courts of Justice Civil Law
Subcommittee, our Blind Parents bill (SB1199) was tabled thus ending our
efforts this year in the General Assembly.

If you want background and details on the bill, please  check out our 2017
Priorities of the Blind which can be found on our fact sheet included on
www.NFBV.org <http://www.NFBV.org> 

 

New legislation rarely passes in its first year in the General assembly.
Through your efforts, we educated our legislators about the challenges blind
parents are facing in custody situations in Virginia and across the country.
While we were able to convince the Senate to support the bill unanimously,
opposition from the Virginia Bar Association's Family Law Consortium raised
doubts in the minds of the House Civil Law subcommittee members. This is the
second time in 2 weeks the house Civil Law subcommittee has tabled the bill
after hearing from the Virginia Family Law Consortium. This legislation will
not proceed this year. 

 

Your advocacy efforts were helpful. Instead of immediately tabling our bill
as they did last time, the  committee members  asked numerous question in a
discussion which lasted 20+ minutes . Unfortunately,  they still tabled our
bill. 

 

Mark Roane and Earl Everett were so committed to drive our legislation
forward. Mark and Earl met with the staff of every member of the House
courts of Justice committee. They attended multiple committee meetings over
the past 3 weeks and we certainly owe them our thanks and appreciation.
Derek Manners, who outlined our legislative issues at the Richmond seminar
and was the key developer of our 2017 priorities for the Blind, prepared a
detailed explanation refuting the key points of the Virginia Family Law
Consortium that was distributed to each member of the House Courts of
Justice Committee.

 

We thank Mark, Earl and Derek for their  tremendous efforts and appreciate
the work of so many of our members in advocating for this legislation. We
are committed to the rights    of blind parents and will continue to work to
address these challenges in the 2018 legislative session.

 

Tracy Soforenko

President, National Federation of the Blind of Virginia

202 285-4595

Tracy.soforenko at gmail.com <mailto:Tracy.soforenko at gmail.com>