Subcommittee reports bill to restore reregistration for certain registrants after 2020 code change

A Virginia General Assembly Public Safety subcommittee voted 5-0 to report Senate Bill 844, a technical fix to restore periodic reregistration requirements for certain registrants, after testimony from the Virginia State Police that a 2020 code revision inadvertently removed that requirement and limited law-enforcement enforcement.

Sponsor Sen. Amanda Craig said the bill “is basically just a little technical, common sense fix,” explaining that language in §9.1-904 was struck in 2020. Craig said that under the current text tier 1 registrants “register for that 1 year and now they don't have to re register,” and described the prior re-registration schedule as one year of initial registration followed by periodic re-registration — “tier ones… re register for 15 years unless it gets knocked down to 10 years once a year. Tier 2… have to register every 6 months for 25 years.”

Julia Gunderson of the Virginia State Police told the panel the department supports the bill. A State Police witness testified that “under the current law, law enforcement may not arrest tier 1 registrants for failure to register, which creates a public safety risk to the Commonwealth.” Committee counsel said the substitute before the subcommittee added a criminal-impact statement; counsel characterized that as the only change in the substitute.

The subcommittee’s action was procedural: Delegate Wilt moved to report the bill out of the subcommittee and the motion was seconded; the clerk closed the roll and the bill was reported 5 to 0. No amendments or conditions were recorded in the transcript.

The bill was presented as a targeted correction to statutory language rather than a policy change; the sponsor and State Police characterized it as restoring previously intended enforcement authority by reinserting re-registration requirements into the code section referenced in the bill.