THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 12, 1996 TAG: 9602120053
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: General Assembly 1996
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 178 lines
A loud ping breaks the clatter, and Del. Billy Robinson's gaze flickers around the chamber like his eyebrows are on fire. The noise means he has to vote, quickly. But like so many of his colleagues, Robinson isn't paying attention. And he's on the wrong side of the room.
``Is this a no? Is this no?'' he pleads, his tie flapping as he lopes toward his seat. No one offers any guidance.
``I don't know what this is, but I'm voting no,'' Robinson says, finding his seat. Then he stamps his index finger onto the red button on his desk. The measure dies. His Democratic colleagues are visibly pleased, and Robinson ambles away with a smile.
``I got it right,'' he beams. The sound of 100 politicians gabbing again fills the room.
The General Assembly is this week locked in its annual legislative snarl known as ``crossover,'' where members push the boundaries of their skill, their stamina, their patience, their dry-cleaning. Crossover, simply, is a deadline. A proposed law introduced in the House of Delegates or the Senate must move to the other side by Wednesday morning.
Even in more temperate times, some observers marvel that Virginia's lawmakers vacate the capital every year having gotten anything right. If those observers saw the legislature now at its midpoint, they might wonder how the commonwealth survives at all.
The House and Senate waited more than a week to pass their first bills, now they consider 100 or more a day. Paperwork can be measured by the pallet-load, coffee by the drum.
When the legislature convened in early January, daily floor sessions lasted 10 minutes or less.
Now floor sessions take hours even on weekends, and committees convene at dawn and meet deep into the night.
Lawmakers have been working for a month, yet more than half the workload bottlenecks at this mid-point deadline. Their personal lives, their diets, and the quality of their work all take a pounding.
Imagine 140 college sophomores coughing out term papers. Or a team of lumberjacks in business suits, hacking away at a month-old logjam.
``Crossover,'' said Sen. Joseph V. Gartlan Jr., D-Fairfax, a 24-year veteran, ``is the time when all General Assembly members are punished for their past sins.''
The spectacle might seem punishing to the citizens of Virginia as well. Members don't have time to read the bills; they simply vote with the masses. Amendments are adopted on faith.
On routine matters, one lawmaker might vote for two or three others who have left the room. Delegates and senators frequently have three or more meetings scheduled at the same time.
On the more significant matters, members somehow focus and perform. But the less-conspicuous concerns just get dragged along with the herd.
On the floor, measures move so quickly it would take some magic legislative omniscience to keep up with the details. Robinson, in voting on an amendment to a bill giving reporters easier access to prisoners, was initially satisfied with his blind vote, but later repined. If he'd had more time, he would have voted the other way, he said.
Time is precious. The Senate Courts of Justice Committee - which handles criminal laws - worked well into the night Wednesday. After 20 head-scratching minutes pondering a bill about child-support penalties, debate snagged on a complicated detail. Eyes narrowed, sleeves were rolled higher and bodies sank deeper into seats.
Then a delivery guy with an armload of pizzas showed up and the bill was dead within seconds.
Crossover is more disorderly in the House, which has far more bills to consider than the Senate. And, unlike senators, delegates don't suspend their rules on a whim and pass big chunks of laws en masse.
The pressure bore down Thursday on seven delegates - and three times as many lobbyists - who had been up since dawn chewing on a controversial health care bill.
``Ladies and gentleman, we have 20 minutes. One way or the other we are going to get a bill out of here,'' announced Del. W.W. ``Ted'' Bennett, D-Halifax, leader of the group.
So when Bennett's subcommittee got stuck on a single verb, members painted over it with fuzzy language and moved on. The lobbyists didn't even know what the change meant.
The next day before the full Corporations, Insurance and Banking Committee, little changed. ``I'm not sitting around here for four more hours listening to a bunch of health care people,'' said Del. George H. Heilig Jr., D-Norfolk, chairman of the committee. The bill moved on, a half-baked souffle ready to rise or fall later in the Senate.
One anonymous delegate summed up the potential for error: ``You could pass the label off a pickle jar during crossover, and nobody would know the difference,'' he said.
In all the session's half-way hubbub, lawmakers acknowledge their attention span withers. They've left out letters, commas or italics over the years. They've misspelled words. They've even changed the wrong section of the law.
But the system allows for mistakes. The clerks and their technology are efficient enough to avert catastrophes, and after crossover the opposite chambers have a month to make repairs. Once the annual session ends, members hold a one-day mop-up.
They need it.
``It's always been a problem, I think, and it seems to get worse and worse,'' said Joseph H. Holleman Jr., House clerk in the 1970s and 1980s.
``It's really sad sometimes that they can't limit themselves and give more time to the legislation they have before them,'' Holleman said. ``They're just figuring all their corrections can be made in the other body.''
Because the General Assembly has two houses - the Senate and the House of Delegates - if one passes a bill, the other has to pass it, too, or it won't become a law.
Thus the concept of crossover. Legislation will ``cross over'' after Tuesday, the deadline for each house to consider its own bills (except the state budget, which commands its own separate schedule).
Decades ago, there was no crossover. The only deadline was final adjournment, making the last days a frantic hopscotch around the two houses and their committees.
Of course, lawmakers considered only a few hundred bills then - this year, they are tackling more than 2,500. On the deadline for submitting bills this year, they dropped 1,400 bills and resolutions on the clerks' desks.
Senators and delegates admit they don't read all the laws that are passed each year, because they know it would be all but impossible to do so. That's what committees and subcommittees are for.
``The volume of all this is at an all-time high,'' said Bill Wilson, director of Legislative Automated Systems. His staff toils in the basement of the General Assembly Building opposite the Capitol and arranges printing of the bills, resolutions, amendments and schedules.
One-third of Wilson's $2.8 million budget is for printing costs, and nearly all of that is spent during the two months the state legislature is in town. Just printing the bills and resolutions can cost nearly $450,000 in a busy year. The budget bill alone costs $38,000.
When the General Assembly makes changes to a bill, it typically casts a final vote on the measure the next day. By then, 1,200 or more copies of the amended proposal have to be available for circulation.
No one counts all the trees felled to turn each legislator's ideas into thousands of hole-punched leaflets.
Forty years ago, the Assembly pasted in amendments or wrote them in the margins. Without copiers and computers, ``There were only about three copies back then,'' said Holleman, who started working for the General Assembly's printing room in the 1940s. ``They could come down and look at it if they wanted to.''
There's a simple explanation for the legislature's developed fondness for paperwork, Wilson said. It's so easy to produce, everyone takes it for granted.
``I have to blame the technology, as much as I love it,'' Wilson said. ``From the days when they used straight pens and scissors and tape, the number of (complete rewrites) they ask for has increased phenomenally.''
Things looked pretty low-tech Saturday in the House of Delegates, where members crammed in a few hours of weekend tinkering. Speaker Thomas W. Moss Jr., D-Norfolk, gavel in hand, often looked like a one-man show. Five bills in a row advanced the same way. The room was full, but nobody appeared to be paying any attention.
``Those in favor . . . will say aye,'' Moss said. Pause. No one responded.
``Those opposed?'' No answer again.
Moss declared the measures passed and moved on.
Del. Riley E. Ingram of Hopewell stood up and broke the drudgery at one point, but only to crack a joke.
``Apparently the body has unlimited time,'' Moss retorted, nose upturned.
``You're all going to be awfully sorry at about two o'clock Wednesday morning. So just keep it up.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color photos]
[On the North Carolina Front]
BILL TIERNAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Seated at his desk in the House of Delegates last week, Del. George
H. Heilig Jr., D-Norfolk, checks the daily calendar to find out
which bills are coming up for House action.
BILL TIERNAN
The Virginian-Pilot
Two Democrats - Del. C. Richard Cranwell of Vinton, left, and Del.
Jerrauld C. Jones of Norfolk - conferred on the House floor last
week during a discussion on raising the speed limit for some roads.
KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY by CNB