ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 TAG: 9601160039
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
COUNT STATE House Democrats among the slow learners of Virginia politics.
While the Virginia Senate found its way last week to sharing power between the parties, albeit via a process that approximated teeth-pulling, Democratic leaders in the House of Delegates were failing - still - to grasp some basic political realities.
To spell out one such reality for House Speaker Thomas Moss, Majority Leader Richard Cranwell and anyone else who may need reminding:
E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N-S.
Delegates should know that the makeup of the House and its committees is subject ultimately not to party leaders' dictates, but to the voters' will.
Elections, moreover, don't happen once and for all, leaving a political balance of power permanently fixed. They recur regularly, and with results that over time may reflect a trend.
One such trend, which even the most partisan of Democrats should be able to discern, is the gradual advance of GOP representation in both houses of the General Assembly.
State senators finally had to face up to this fact after last November's election left Democrats and Republicans with a 20-20 split. Last week they succeeded in producing an agreement that will leave Republicans chairing four committees, enjoying majorities on four, dividing the chairmanship of the key Senate Finance Committee, and having a say in judicial appointments. This is power-sharing for real.
To be sure, the negotiations, leaving various arms still sore from twisting, were not pretty. Nor was the agreement, unanimously approved in the Senate, an act of magnanimity on the part of most Democrats - tempted as they were to depend on the lieutenant governor's tie-breaking vote to tough it out and avoid power-sharing in committee assignments.
By threatening to vote with the GOP's organizational plan, Rocky Mount Democrat Virgil Goode helped his party find its way to wisdom.
And yet, even if necessity did mother the Senate's invention, that's no excuse for House Democrats' perverse petulance in going the other way last week. If they weren't going to be more accommodating, they at least could have left the balance of House committee composition much as it had been.
Instead, Democrats stripped Republicans of key committee assignments. They removed Vance Wilkins of Amherst County - an annoying, overly zealous partisan, but still the House GOP leader - from the Rules Committee. They shrank GOP representation on important budget panels.
``It was in the best interest of the commonwealth,'' said Moss. Oh? Since when were power games, petty vindictiveness and political retribution in the commonwealth's best interest?
Don't House leaders realize they're assuring that such practices will remain par for the course - but with roles reversed - after they're out of power and the Republicans have taken over?
Even if last November's repudiation of GOP efforts to win both houses did mark a decisive and enduring expression of the voters' will, as some Democrats apparently hope, the steadily shrinking margin of Democratic majority still ought to translate into a fairer power-share for the GOP.
Democrats should take their stands on policy grounds, not organizational plans. The best interest of the commonwealth was expressed last week by forward-looking state senators. It was flouted by a House not yet coming to grips with a new political landscape.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB