CHESAPEAKE, Va. — Virginia’s next biennial budget could have a pool of money set aside toward supporting victims of mass violence events in the Commonwealth.
Last week, Governor Glenn Youngkin shared proposed budget amendments for the Commonwealth’s next two-year budget to be voted on in the 2023 General Assembly session.
One of the budget amendments is a $10 million allocation to establish the "Virginia Mass Violence Care Fund" (VMVCF).
The budget item makes up roughly 9% of Youngkin's law enforcement amendments and would be regulated by the Department of Criminal Services.
With the goal of financially assisting victims and victims' families, it closely mirrors the efforts of a previous program established to help the families of the Virginia Tech mass shooting in 2007.
"I thought I was doing OK, but people saw I wasn’t," said Joseph Samaha.
Samaha, who is the Director of Victims Advocacy for the VTV Family Outreach Foundation, lost his daughter Reema in that deadly shooting. In the years since, he's helped establish the VTV Care fund, which can financially reimburse 177 identified victims and victim's family members who are still on the road to recovery from
He said those reimbursements can be used to help pay for expenses not picked up by insurance and has funded roughly $650,000 worth of expenses back to those families since its inception.
"Those dollars have been helpful because let's say a therapist is $200 a session: insurance might pay 100, and the other 100 comes from your pocket," he said.
Now, he's advocating for the establishment of the VMVCF, an effort that could impact the families from the 2019 municipal center shooting in Virginia Beach, this year's Walmart shooting in Chesapeake, and more.
"We’ve established for two years this worked, our endowment fund is in the green," he said.
According to Samaha, the reimbursements would start at least three years after the incident's date.
Gov. Youngkin’s biennial budget amendments include more than $100 million in total toward law enforcement, including the VMVCF.