ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997 TAG: 9702270016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: RAY L. GARLAND
SOURCE: RAY L. GARLAND
THE 1997 Virginia Assembly isn't quite history yet. The mass of measures moved in its last days now repose on the desk of Gov. George Allen, and legislators will reconvene April 2 to consider his amendments and vetoes.
This was the last regular meeting of the legislature Allen will face, and he came out of it looking more like a flying duck than a lame duck.
It was also the last session at which the presumptive candidates for governor, GOP Attorney General Jim Gilmore and Democratic Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, could make their mark before beginning in earnest the arduous campaign that will allow one of them to stand where Allen is.
And two candidates for the Republican nomination for attorney general, Sens. Mark Earley and Ken Stolle, had an opportunity to put their wares in the shop window.
Considering only those most likely to vote in the GOP primary June 10, Earley gained an advantage as chief patron of high-profile bills requiring parents to be notified before their minor child has an abortion, and to sanction those assisting another to commit suicide.
For most of those who follow state politics, it was a mercy that parental notification passed after nearly two decades of debate. Considering the limited and largely symbolic scope of such a law, it should not have occupied so much of the assembly's time, or the attention of the press. Still, pro-abortion forces fought to the bitter end.
GOP Del. Anne Rhodes offered an amendment allowing notification to be satisfied by informing an adult sibling or a grandparent of a minor seeking an abortion, which passed 52-48. But the Senate insisted on returning the bill to its original intent, and finally prevailed. Democrats did not want to carry this baggage into the fall election. They can now tell their party's militant pro-choice wing they did all they could to weaken the bill, and tell others they voted for it. But a ban on partial-birth abortions, which passed the House 96-3, failed in a Senate committee.
Among the statewide candidates, Beyer had the greatest opportunity to promote his cause by reason of the Democrats' majority of 53 seats in the house, which stood like a stone wall, and his constitutional role of presiding over a Senate divided between 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans. His goals were modest but mainly achieved.
As a Northern Virginia Democrat with close ties to his party's prevailing orthodoxy, Beyer needs to establish the image of a common-sense Virginia Democrat in the mold of former Gov. Gerald Baliles, who had such an easy victory in 1985. A tough-on-crime stance was obviously obligatory in the process of careful positioning that has marked Beyer's long march toward the governorship.
The lieutenant governor's program included expanded public access to the state's sex-offender registry and increasing police manpower at both the state and local levels. The assembly appropriated $5.4 million to hire 105 new state troopers and $4.8 million to pay the 25 percent local share needed to qualify for federal funds to hire about 700 additional police officers and sheriff's deputies under President Clinton's much-touted initiative to put 100,000 more police on the job.
No one supplied an answer to the pressing problem of attracting qualified applicants for the many police jobs now vacant. And no one knew what would happen when federal funds for the "COPS" program run out. A better approach might have been to focus on raising wages for existing police and corrections' officers to reduce turnover and to improve quality.
Mindful that House Democrats could make him look bad by ditching his proposals, Gilmore took a low-key approach. But even he got most of what he asked for. A GOP ploy to give teachers a degree of immunity from lawsuits arising from applying discipline to unruly students was passed, but no money was provided to back the governor's request for the state to assume liability coverage. That would have been poaching on the preserves of the Virginia Education Association.
Legislators happily added almost $400 million in new spending to the $35 billion budget for 1996-98 approved last year. From the governor down, there was little sentiment for using any part of the surplus for tax relief. That reflects a changed political climate - one in which citizens of a prospering state and nation fret less about taxes and think more of what government can do for them.
The greatest show the assembly afforded was over filling a vacancy on the state Supreme Court. While the spectacle of gridlock over judges probably played poorly on television, there was nothing sinister in the desire of Democrats to prevail, as they almost always had, nor in Republicans wanting a say, as they almost always hadn't.
The state Constitution requires judges to be elected by a majority of members elected to each house. Because the lieutenant governor is not defined as a "member" of the Senate, Beyer couldn't cast a deciding vote for his party's choice, General District Court Judge Margaret Spencer of Richmond. For obvious reasons, Republicans couldn't carry the day for former GOP Del. Steve Agee of Salem, who lost the nomination for attorney general to Gilmore in 1993.
But Republicans finally secured four Democratic defectors (Sens. Marye, Colgan, Holland and Waddell) to elect former GOP state Sen. Wiley Mitchell of Alexandria, chief litigator for the Norfolk Southern Corp. now residing in Virginia Beach. Despite the great esteem in which the capable Mitchell was held during his service (1976-88) in the assembly, House Democrats refused to go along. Allen will now fill the seat.
The governor will be under some pressure to reward Agee, his old House colleague and the GOP's first pick in this race. Gilmore may hope for a choice that reflects Republican sensitivity to the claims of women and minorities to serve on the state's highest court. But the fact Mitchell was the only candidate to attract bipartisan support should carry some weight. Certainly, it is hard to imagine an applicant with greater experience or capacity.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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