ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603030014
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
Combining racial undertones, partisan politics and the philosophical question of whether lawmakers should listen to voters or colleagues, a proposal allowing Richmonders to elect a mayor citywide has eclipsed the typical local government bill in controversy.
Friday was no exception. Debate on the bill led Lt. Gov. Don Beyer to a rare tie-breaker, while dueling Richmond senators raised the spectre of lawsuits if the bill passed and enraged voters if it didn't.
"Richmond is not an ordinary city. Richmond represents all this state stands for. It is the crossroads of our future, the culmination of our past," thundered Sen. Charles Hawkins, R-Chatham, explaining why senators from Manassas and Windsor should care.
In the end, the senators voted to let the capital hold a citywide mayoral election in 1998. The decision puts the Senate at odds with the House, which has chosen to study the issue for the next year.
Those favoring the plan note that Richmonders - black and white - voted by about 2-1 last fall for a citywide election. Such results are routinely honored by the legislature.
But most of the city's legislative delegation has come out against the change, arguing that it could undermine hard-won political advances by the city's African-American majority.
Supporters, including a group of black ministers and the city's mayor, who is black, dispute that claim.
Apparently aware that one Democratic senator would join Republicans in supporting the measure in the evenly split Senate, Sen. Thomas Norment, R-Williamsburg, forced Beyer into a vote on the controversy.
Norment, who supported the citywide election, first voted against it, creating a 20-20 tie. Beyer voted nay, killing the measure. But then Norment asked that the measure be reconsidered, as is the parliamentary right of someone voting on the winning side.
On the second tally, he voted "yes," and the bill passed 21-19. Farewell to bail for major felons
Individuals convicted of a violent or major drug-related crime probably will be denied bail if they're accused of a second, similar offense, according to legislation passed Friday by the Senate.
A slightly different version of the bill, which is sponsored by Del. William Moore, D-Portsmouth, earlier passed the House.
Assurances to the contrary, supporters of the bill feared that an attempt on the Senate floor to return it to committee for a cost estimate was an attempt to kill the bill.
The measure would affect "only a small number of potential criminals, most of whom are not getting bail anyway," said Frederick Quayle, R-Chesapeake, arguing against the committee referral.
"Send 'em a message," said Sen. Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount, advocating the creation of a "rebuttable presumption" against bail.
By voice vote, senators turned down the committee referral. They then passed the bill 37-3.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB