A Virginia Senate committee blocked a proposal Monday that would have required the city of Richmond to adopt more stringent criteria when hiring future directors of the Department of Public Utilities.

The legislation was filed by Sen. Glen Sturtevant, R-Chesterfield, in response to the water crisis earlier this month that left much of the city and parts of the greater Richmond region without running water for days. 

While presenting the bill to the Senate Local Government Committee Monday morning, Sturtevant said he didn’t want to get into “throwing shade” at any particular city officials but felt the situation revealed a “lack of qualifications in certain individuals running the Department of Public Utilities.”

Even though the proposal would only apply to Richmond, Sturtevant said, the water outage revealed how a single city department can impact “nearly a million people in this region.”

“This bill seeks to avoid having that happen again,” said Sturtevant, who previously served on the Richmond School Board before being elected to represent a more conservative constituency based in Chesterfield County. “Because it put people out of school, affected our hospitals, put people out of work. And essentially brought state government to a halt for a few days.”

Sturtevant’s bill appeared to be aimed at former DPU Director April Bingham, who had a customer service background and resigned from her job Jan. 15 amid fallout from the water controversy. Though Bingham’s handling of the crisis has drawn praise from Mayor Danny Avula, she was replaced by former state water official Anthony “Scott” Morris, a licensed engineer who most recently worked as director of water at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

The Senate bill would have required the city to prioritize technical expertise in DPU directors. The legislation would have put new DPU hiring criteria in the city’s charter by requiring DPU director candidates to have a bachelor’s degree in “engineering, infrastructure management, or a related field from an accredited institution” or a “professional certification relevant to public utilities or works” such as an engineering license or public works management credential.

“This bill still gives the city of Richmond fairly wide latitude in the qualifications of the person they hire to run DPU, but nonetheless requires that there be a certain minimum level of qualifications,” Sturtevant said at the committee hearing. 

The bill was rejected on an 8-7 vote along party lines, with Republicans backing Sturtevant and Democrats opposing the proposal. Sen. Lamont Bagby, a Democrat whose district covers much of the city, made the motion to kill the bill.

With elections for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general coming up this year, the Richmond water crisis has already become fodder for state politics. Some Republicans have pointed to it as evidence of mismanagement in Democratic-run cities, casting blame particularly on former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney. After leaving office at the end of 2024, Stoney is now seeking the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.

Though several reviews of the water crisis are underway that could provide more concrete answers about what failed and why, Sturtevant has opined on social media that “it sounds more and more like incompetence was a big factor.”

At the committee hearing, his bill seemed to run into trouble by being targeted only at Richmond instead of being proposed as a rule affecting all areas of the state.

Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William, asked Sturtevant if the Richmond City Council had requested the bill and pointed out the state legislature generally doesn’t impose its own changes on a specific local government.

“This committee really does not act on resolutions for charter changes not adopted by a locality,” said McPike, who chairs the Senate’s committee on local government issues.

Sen. David Suetterlein, R-Roanoke County, also said the idea being styled as a Richmond-specific charter change created “some issues.” He asked Sturtevant if he had considered making it a statewide rule, similar to a Virginia law requiring local health departments to be run by directors with specific medical credentials, such as being a licensed physician.

“This is something that could arise elsewhere,” Suetterlein said. “We obviously all experienced the problem here in the capital city. But I don’t think what’s a good idea would only be a good idea here.”

Sturtevant agreed Richmond isn’t the only locality with “aging infrastructure,” but he said the management troubles already flagged by state officials indicate Richmond has a unique problem worthy of legislative attention.

“It is the only locality in the state that wasn’t able to operate its waterworks for an extended period of time because we had snow,” he said. “And they didn’t have people on staff who were adequately trained to deal with a very short power outage.”

Sturtevant also discounted the idea of deferring to Richmond leaders on the subject, saying, “Richmond city government is what helped us get into this situation in the first place.”

Speaking with reporters after an unrelated event Monday morning, Richmond Mayor Danny Avula reiterated that — regardless of the outcome on Sturtevant’s bill — the city is taking its own steps to prevent future water outages and ensure the plant operates better in the future.

“We want to make sure that we have the right talent and expertise to make sure that that happens,” Avula said. “And then also the willingness to work regionally to make sure that critical infrastructure is really shared.”

Reporter Sarah Vogelsong contributed to this article.