Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 31, 1993 TAG: 9303310244
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
The measure, sponsored by Sen. Robert Russell, R-Chesterfield, would prohibit state party chairmen from working as lobbyists. Former state Democratic Chairman Paul Goldman, one of Wilder's closest allies, is a lobbyist for several groups and saw himself as Russell's intended target.
Tuesday, Wilder said he'd sign the bill if the assembly amends it to add a prohibition against lobbying by legislators' law partners, business partners or family members.
"That throws down the gauntlet to the legislature," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia.
"On the surface, it doesn't bother me, because I'm not a lawyer and I don't have a law partner," Russell said. "But if the governor thought it was so important, why didn't he put a bill in [during the assembly session]? It looks kind of like, `Yeah, and your mother is one, too.' "
To Goldman, who said the original bill missed its mark because he's already stepped down from the party leadership, the governor's changes were a fitting counterstrike.
"The legislature now has a chance to begin to deal with the whole question of their political retaliation," Goldman said. "It's not a mess you can clean up in one day, with one action, but the governor has given them the opportunity to begin to deal with that question."
Wilder's change makes the bill more fair by broadening it, Goldman said.
It also is "a shrewd move," Sabato said, "because if they reject the amendment it gives Wilder the rationale to veto the original bill."
The governor was quick Tuesday to put legislators on the spot.
"Knowing that they wanted to include more people [in ethics reform], I put the other people in there that they had not put in - like the legislators' wives, and the law firms and the people who would be associated therewith, because the whole purpose is to eliminate undue influence," Wilder said.
Ethics reform is a touchy topic between Wilder and lawmakers; the governor pushed several related bills during the assembly session, but all were shelved because legislators wanted to conduct their own study.
"Well, this goes to the heart of ethics reform as it directly affects the livelihood of people close to the legislators," Sabato said. "A lot of them are going to find it very hard to swallow those amendments."
by CNB