Read more about the bills mentioned in this story — or any other legislation in the 2025 General Assembly session — at https://lis.virginia.gov/.
A House committee on Friday killed, without comment, a bill dealing with blighted buildings that was requested by Bristol officials who’ve been wrestling for years with the former campus of Virginia Intermont College.
HB 2745 was voted down 13-9 in the House Cities, Counties and Towns Committee. All those who voted against it were Democrats. On Thursday, a subcommittee had reported the bill in a vote of 7-0; five of the same Democrats who voted against the measure Friday had voted yes the day before.
HB 2745 and SB 1476, introduced by Del. Israel O’Quinn and Sen. Todd Pillion, both Republicans from Washington County, would allow a locality to sell vacant and blighted or derelict property by petitioning the circuit court. The court would then appoint a special commissioner to execute the deeds needed to convey the real estate to the locality, its land bank entity or an existing nonprofit designated to carry out the functions of a land bank.
The bill would also have applied to other blighted properties in Bristol and some other localities across the state.
Originally, both bills would have applied only to properties owned or controlled by non-U.S. entities or people who aren’t U.S. citizens, and they would have required that the property have been vacant for at least two years.
However, both bills were amended, with the foreign ownership provision stripped out and the two-year vacancy requirement increased to five years.
O’Quinn said Friday afternoon he was surprised that his bill had failed, particularly since it had drawn no opposition in the subcommittee the day before. He said he was attending the meeting of the House Privileges and Elections Committee next door and could easily have dropped in to answer questions from members of the Cities, Counties and Towns Committee.
“It’s very discourteous to kill someone’s bill when it came out of a subcommittee uncontested and then kill it without even notifying the patron,” he said.
One member of the subcommittee suggested that the bill be reconsidered with O’Quinn present, but that motion failed.
O’Quinn said he believes there was some “consternation” among the Democrats who voted against the bill over the foreign-owned entities portion of the bill. One member of the committee said during the meeting that it still appeared to be part of the bill but was told to refresh her computer and that provision disappeared.
Bristol officials requested the bills just weeks after an inferno on the former VI campus burned four of the oldest buildings at the college, which was 130 years old when it closed in 2014 amid financial struggles, declining enrollment and the loss of accreditation.
It was bought at auction two years later by a company in China that promised to establish a business college at the site in downtown Bristol, but the project never materialized. In the meantime, the buildings deteriorated and the property was deemed blighted. The campus became the target of vandals, there were a number of break-ins and it became a haven for the homeless.
The Senate passed its version of the bill on Thursday on a 32-8 vote.
Following crossover on Tuesday, the Senate bill will go to the House for consideration and will likely be heard by the same committee that killed the bill Friday, according to O’Quinn.
Bristol City Manager Randy Eads, who traveled to Richmond to testify for the bill several times in the last two weeks, was also surprised and disappointed that the House bill failed. But he said he’ll likely go back next week to fight for approval of the Senate bill.
“We have some work to do,” he said Friday.
