The General Assembly session entailed more than two months of lobbying, legislating, and letter writing by the VADA team and our members.

All that hard work has paid off, and our dealers can take pride in our association’s accomplishments at the State Capitol. This was truly a legislative session that drove our industry forward.

Keeping pro-dealer legislation on track is a very complex process. It’s a lot like selling a vehicle. There are a lot of moving parts that need to fall in the right place at the right time, and it takes persistence to get the deal done.

And VADA worked with both sides of the aisle to garner bipartisan support on issues having a direct impact on our dealerships.

A key example of that success was the unanimous passage this session of VADA’s priority legislation that strengthens the statutory language requiring that dealers receive the retail amounts they are entitled to for warranty/recall repairs performed for manufacturers by clarifying how the retail amount is calculated. This is a win by VADA and dealers that will directly and positively impact your bottom line, save headaches, and retain jobs.

The measure heading to Gov. Glenn Youngkin for his signature also requires manufacturers to fully reimburse our stores for customer rental cars during these recall repairs and pay dealers when we assist in fixing software upgrade issues on behalf of the carmakers.

Our association also saw success in leading the charge to secure passage of legislation to preserve our long-standing dealer exemptions that were left out of Virginia’s Overtime Law when it passed last year. Working with our allies in the House and Senate, both chambers approved that legislative fix which is also on its way to the Governor’s desk.

We continued our efforts to support EV adoption in Virginia, and we also worked to kill measures that would have made it difficult for dealers who choose to do so to use arbitration to work out customer issues.

We didn’t win every battle. The $40 million we sought in on-the-hood rebates for electric vehicle sales did not make it into the budget, but we will keep fighting for these EV rebates that are so critical to boosting EV sales.

If you want the full rundown of what this session means for dealers, get the full update from the VADA legislative team in our High Octane podcast about the General Assembly at teamvada.libsyn.com.