Senator Whipple's Richmond Report

It’s good to be home again after seven weeks in Richmond!

The General Assembly adjourned on Sunday — a day late —after approving the budget.

That’s certainly a much better record than last year when it took an additional 55 days to get agreement on the budget. Still it marks the third time in the five years since the Republicans took over the legislature that the General Assembly has run over its time limit. The Republican Senate and the Republican House leadership couldn’t even agree on what time to meet on Sunday. Generally the sessions are concurrent but this time the Senate met in the morning and the House in the afternoon.

The lack of agreement on that issue is just one more example of the differences evident between the House and the Senate. In most cases these are more substantive disagreements, often related to the budget. For example, the Senate Finance committee looks askance at the notion of taking on debt. This year the House proposed that the state use its credit rating to back bonds for non-state performing arts projects. That proposal was summarily dismissed by the Senate committee.

The Senate is more disposed to raise the revenue that is needed to provide on-going funding for state programs. That was very evident last year when the Senate took the lead in proposing a solution to the state’s tax and budget problems. This year it took the form of insisting that the current “surplus” be used for one-time expenditures for transportation and the environment, leaving to next year a decision on long-term funding.

In other cases the Senate often defeats some ill-advised House legislation. The issue that clearly got the most publicity was the “droopy drawers” bill that would have charged a fine if a person’s underwear was visible. This bill actually got out of committee and was adopted on the floor of the House, leading to worldwide negative reporting about Virginia. A hastily-called special meeting of the Senate committee put a swift end to it.

The Senate Education and Health committee on which I serve defeated several bills that would have made legal first-trimester abortions almost impossible to obtain. A very discriminatory bill that would have prevented undocumented aliens from attending college was also defeated in that committee. Moderate Republicans and Democrats voted together on these issues.

Observers of the General Assembly sometime speculate on what causes the difference in approach. I think one difference is that the Senate districts are two and one-half times bigger than the House districts so members typically have to be more moderate to appeal to a wider electorate. In addition Senators have four year terms so they can take a more measured approach.

Because this is an election year for the House of Delegates, some pieces of legislation were described as “brochure bills” for the fall campaign and even their patrons expected they would be defeated.

Senator Mary Margaret Whipple may be emailed at mmwhipple@erols.com