Gov. Youngkin

Nearly 200 nursing homes in Virginia announced Wednesday that they are suing Gov. Glenn Youngkin over a veto he executed earlier this year that would have helped support staffing efforts at the facilities, which are facing a critical shortage. 

Within this year’s budget bill was a provision passed by the General Assembly that would have provided additional state and federal Medicaid reimbursements to nursing homes to help support staff growth efforts. The idea was among several recommendations made by a special bipartisan committee of lawmakers that toured the state last year to explore health care disparity solutions — particularly those in rural areas. 

As part of the legislative process, governors review all bills that pass the state legislature. From there, they can choose to sign, amend or veto them. But Paul Nardo, the Clerk of the House of Delegates, rejected three of Youngkin’s vetoes in the spring, including the one on the nursing home reimbursements measure, a move the governor chose to ignore. 

Nardo, who is also the Keeper of the Rolls, acted within his purview when he published a letter to Virginia’s Legislative Information System that he would not formally publish the vetoes. He called them unconstitutional under Virginia’s Constitution. 

Nardo explained at the time that Youngkin had broken procedure by attempting to veto the provisions without also vetoing the budget appropriation that contained it. 

It’s the “unconstitutional” argument that is at the core of the pending lawsuit by the nursing homes. VHCA-VCAL wants the state’s top court to force Youngkin to comply with the law. 

In a release, the group’s president and CEO, Keith Hare, said the cohort “had hoped it would not come to this.” 

“This legal action is really about patient care for some of our most vulnerable fellow citizens. It is imperative that nursing homes have the resources they need to appropriately staff facilities and provide their residents with the high-quality care they deserve,” Hare said. 

Political analyst Stephen Farnsworth predicted at the time of the veto back-and-forth in the spring that the dispute “could end up in the courts like just about everything else these days.” 

This story originally appeared at VirgniaMercury.com.