ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 18, 1996 TAG: 9601180041
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ray L. Garland
WHO SITS on which committee in the General Assembly is of scant interest to the public. But it is a subject much on the minds of legislators and those who follow closely in their wake. It also has a material impact on policy.
When a delegate or senator arrives in Richmond for the first time, the leadership generally has some advance word on his or her capacity to make a mark. The new members may also have "helpers" in the form of senior leaders of their party, or influential people who can be enlisted to make a call or two in their behalf. It may make the difference between a seat on Appropriations and one on Agriculture.
How well they do that first term will certainly make a difference when they come back for a second helping. A convivial member who is conspicuous for either diligence or brilliance will almost certainly be promoted to better committees. In the House of Delegates, for example, Courts of Justice will handle 10 times as many bills as Militia and Police, plus a coveted role in deciding the fitness of judges.
If you can exert influence on more bills, especially the budget, you are well-placed to advance your own legislative agenda and perhaps get an extra slice of pork for the home folks. Theoretically, this makes you stronger at the polls, harder to defeat. But most of all it makes you feel better, more important, a comer rather than a laggard. After all, people with small egos are seldom drawn to politics in the first place.
The rare hush that falls on the House and Senate when committees are announced takes you back to school days, when report cards are being handed out. And it amounts to much the same thing: Who's being promoted; who's being held back.
That was the scene in Richmond as the 1996 assembly got down to business, unchanged in the House, where the Democrats' narrow majority held; profoundly changed in the evenly divided Senate.
The power of the speaker of the House rests largely on his immemorial prerogative of making committee assignments. But it is hardly an absolute power. Until Speaker Tom Moss violated it the other day, there was an unwritten rule that no member of a committee could be removed without his consent. As the recognized leader of the majority party - and dependent upon its votes for his own post - a speaker must consult (and satisfy as best he can) seasoned veterans and rising stars.
While it didn't happen this year, according to Minority Leader Vance Wilkins, past speakers have consulted with Republican floor leaders in allocating seats. That is, a speaker might indicate one or more openings for a Republican on a committee and ask the GOP leader for advice on who should be favored. This assumes, of course, the minority leader is in good odor with the majority, which Wilkins manifestly is not, as signified by his unprecedented removal from the Rules Committee.
Though Rules is not a particularly important committee, places on it are traditionally reserved for those who have made their way into the House leadership. As the elected leader of 47 delegates, representing a party that received a majority of all votes cast in the last election, Wilkins had earned his place and should have retained it.
Moss has certainly established ample precedent for retaliation in the event Republicans win a majority of House seats and must expect it. The scope of the speaker's abuse of power can be seen in the fact Republicans were entitled to 10 seats on all major committees but got only four on Appropriations; and seven each on Finance, Corporations and Courts of Justice. Less important committees were fairly allocated.
In view of the closely divided House in the past two elections, Democrats might have been better advised to anticipate the day when they will no longer be the majority. They could have protected themselves by amending the rules to allocate committee seats in proportion to a party's share of the whole House, and by granting the minority leadership the same privilege it enjoys in the Congress and in many other state legislatures. That is, to choose from its own ranks those who will occupy the minority's seats on all committees.
It is a sound principle of politics that members of a legislative minority should not be dependent upon the favor of the majority to win coveted places on committees.
That is exactly what Republicans won in the Senate, and it's a precedent that will likely endure. Because of defections led by Sen. Virgil Goode, D-Franklin County, Democrats were compelled to accept a fair sharing of seats on all committees. They also relinquished their historic power to control all committee assignments. Now, once a division of seats between the parties is agreed upon, the actual assignment of members will be determined within the conclaves of each party.
Republicans will also chair four of the Senate's 11 committees. In an odd twist, a Democrat will chair Commerce and Labor while Republicans hold a majority of the seats. And the reverse on Education and Health: a Republican chairman and a Democratic majority. In an even odder twist, Sen. John Chichester, R-Stafford, and Sen. Stanley Walker, D-Norfolk, will co-chair the powerful committee on Finance.
But Chichester and Walker are the soul of affability and may be expected to get along famously. It was Chichester who took the lead in negotiating with Goode to arrive at the power-sharing arrangement. He paid a great tribute to the Franklin County Democrat, telling me that from first to last, Goode seemed animated solely by the desire for fairness and comity, willing to sacrifice even his own chairmanship of Local Government in the process.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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