Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 13, 1995 TAG: 9501130073
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Wrong, Democrats. The 1995 General Assembly's opening day could be loved only by those whose pleasure is dogfights as vacuous as they are vicious.
Have all the senators had their rabies shots? If not, get them to the vet fast, before they can cause even more harm than Wednesday's self-inflicted wounds to legislative dignity - not to mention damage to public regard for elected representatives, as if further damage were possible.
Our hunch is that the public doesn't give a rat's patootie about the procedural resolution that apparently caused the breakdown in opening-day civility. But Mr. and Ms. Citizen know an insult when they see one.
The Senate snit that effectively denied Gov. George Allen the opportunity to deliver a State of the Commonwealth message in the classic manner, to a joint session of the General Assembly, insulted not just Allen, but the office of Virginia's governor and the public that elected Allen to it.
We won't take bets on whether the Democrats' wallowing in folly was more petulant or doltish. The spectacle Wednesday was ugly enough that it didn't matter.
To recount the sorry events as best we can, the opening-day procedural resolution would have given House Speaker Tom Moss and the Senate President Pro Tem Stanley Walker, both Democrats, the privilege of introducing bills late in the session, heretofore a privilege given only to the governor. Democratic legislators, clinging to majority status by slim margins in both houses, said it was necessary to ``level the playing field'' against the governor.
(Said Senate Majority Leader Hunter Andrews of Hampton: ``All we're asking is that these two people have the same right [as the governor]. That's equity and fairness.'' Come off it. If they want gubernatorial privileges, let them run for governor.)
When the resolution came before the upper chamber, Republicans - with enough votes to deny the needed two-thirds majority - voted to kill it. ``No procedural resolution," pouted the Democrats, "no proceeding.'' That left the senators without a rule by which they could agree to reconvene with delegates in the House's chamber Wednesday night so that the governor could make his address in the usual way. Instead, the Senate abruptly adjourned.
The titters and ``nyah, nyahs'' from the likes of Gartlan reflected Democrats' initial flush of partisan one-upmanship. If Allen was the first governor in state history made unwelcome to speak to a joint session on opening day, the way they saw it, it was his own Republicans' doing.
But when Allen decided to speak from his own third-floor offices directly, via television and radio, to any Virginians who cared to watch or listen, he came off looking like the only adult on the premises.
Democrats, saying the GOP leadership had been sounded out beforehand and had agreed to the procedural resolution, cried set-up. But if so, the Democrats can blame only themselves for falling into it.
Virginia Democrats seem at a loss as to how to respond to the scorched-earth politics of the popular Republican governor. What the majorities of both houses should be doing is debating Allen's flawed budgetary proposals and the premises that inform them. These, not procedural petulance, will affect the lives of most Virginians. What we got instead was a Senate embarrassing itself in public and diverting attention from issues that matter.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995
by CNB