THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603020273
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID POOLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
Sen. Yvonne B. Miller is the only member of the Virginia Senate who refused to be a patron for a resolution commending three police officers who shot and killed a suspect after a deadly string of crimes in Virginia Beach last weekend.
The Norfolk Democrat declined to explain her decision, which some colleagues viewed as a snub of one of the officers, Norfolk policeman Tim Sullivan.
``I'm glad you find it newsworthy that I didn't sign a resolution,'' Miller told a reporter on Friday.
Virginia Beach Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle, a Republican and former cop, introduced the resolution to salute Sullivan and Beach officers Jared Legg and Rafael Vargas.
Sullivan was on his way home in Virginia Beach after finishing his shift last Saturday when he spotted the car of a man suspected of killing a woman in a botched robbery and later slaying a man in a carjacking.
Legg and Vargas joined the pursuit after Sullivan radioed for assistance. The suspect left his vehicle and was cornered in a townhouse development off Providence Road, where he was killed in a shootout with police.
The suspect later was identified as Sammy J. Gary, 20, of Portsmouth.
Before he introduced the resolution, Stolle passed it around so his colleagues could sign on as co-patrons. He said he approached Miller when the document came back to him without her signature.
``I asked if she would like to sign, and she told me, `It doesn't matter who it's for. I don't sign resolutions,' '' Stolle recalled.
This year, Miller has co-sponsored 60 other resolutions that, among others, praised baseball slugger Maurice ``Mo'' Vaughn and commended the Virginia Association of Parliamentarians.
Stolle noted that the entire Norfolk delegation in the House of Delegates also signed the police officers' resolution.
``I just think it's a shame that someone like officer Sullivan, who made such an important contribution to his city in arresting a dangerous criminal, does not have Norfolk's full delegation as sponsors,'' Stolle said.
``That's unusual, but that's Yvonne.''
Combining racial undertones, partisan politics, and the philosophical test 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. Donald S. Beyer to a rare tie-breaker, while dueling Richmond senators raised the specter 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 R. Hawkins, R-Chatham, explaining why senators from Manassas and Windsor should care.
In the end, the senators voted 21-19 to let the capital hold a citywide mayoral election in 1998.
The tally puts the Senate at odds with the House, which has decided to study the issue for the next year.
Those favoring the plan note that Richmonders - black and white - voted by about 2-to-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 side with Republicans on the measure in the evenly-split Senate, Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr. forced Beyer into a vote on the controversy.
Norment, a Williamsburg Republican 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.
Individuals convicted of a violent or major drug-related crime will probably 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 S. Moore Jr., 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 M. Quayle, R-Chesapeake, arguing against the committee referral.
``Send 'em a message,'' said Sen. Virgil H. Goode Jr., 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.
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