Newsletter

February 9, 2003

Dear Friends:

Week 5 of the 2003 Session was the busiest to date, as we reached Crossover and considered the budget. Getting all of this accomplished resulted in two marathon floor sessions: on Monday we convened at 10:00 am and worked until after 7:30 that night, and on Thursday we were in again for over nine hours.

Lengthy sessions like those are a test of Members' attention spans as well as their fortitude. It's impossible to gauge when debate on a bill will end abruptly and a vote will occur. As opposed to the U.S. House and Senate, which give their members a leisurely 15 minutes or more to cast their votes, here the process is instantaneous. You have to be in your seat and pressing the "Yea" or "Nay" button, or you miss your chance to be recorded. That means no strolling around the back of the chamber to restore circulation to your feet, no conversations with a colleague whose desk is several rows over from yours - and judiciously timed bathroom breaks.

The week began on Sunday with the House and Senate money committees unveiling their amendments to the budget proposal that Governor Warner had submitted in December. In anticipation of the 5:00 pm release of the subcommittee reports in budget areas such as education, health and human resources, and transportation, the queue of lobbyists and legislative aides lined up outside the Appropriation Committee hearing room began to form around 3:30.

Much of the time between Sunday afternoon and consideration of the bill on the floor Thursday was spent poring over the hundreds of amendments. What had been added or subtracted from the original budget? What would be the impact on localities and programs? And, sometimes the question was more basic: What in the world was going on? Like, why did they want to spend $50,000 on a "Virginia Beach Labor Day Event"?

Armed with this knowledge, or with questions about things we couldn't figure out, we debated the budget bill on Thursday. The Clerk of the House began by reading through the item numbers of the 200 or so committee amendments. If a Member raised an objection to an item, either to oppose it or simply to get an explanation of its purpose, it was set aside to be voted on separately. The remaining 93 items were approved in a block.

I raised objections to a couple of items. One was the aforementioned "Virginia Beach Labor Day Event." It seems that the $50,000 would be used to help promote a city-sponsored marathon race over Labor Day weekend. Nothing wrong with the event, but I'm at a loss to understand why the state ought to be putting up money for it.

I also objected to a $1.26 million item for "the Virginia Horse Centers' debt service payment." What is this obscure reference? It turns out that over the past decade the state has subsidized the horse-breeding industry through a fancy equine center out in Lexington, to the tune of over $7 million. I told the House, "It's time for us to end welfare as we know it for Virginia's horses." Nonetheless, the horse lobby won.

At the end of the 140+ proposed amendments to the budget, I was disappointed at the final product. Despite all the brave talk going into the effort about scrutinizing the process and looking at the "core functions of government," in the end this was business as usual.

We could have followed the lead of the Governor in the budget he presented in December, ensuring that the priorities of state government were met and setting us on a course of fiscal responsibility. Instead, the budget is filled with a lot of the gimmicks that got us into the fix we're in today: inflated revenue projections, one-time fixes, and fudged figures.

At the same time that the budget cut health care, education, and public safety, they found money to pay the mortgage on a horse barn in Lexington and fund a Labor Day event in Virginia Beach.

Those two items were examples of the parochial pork that is a disturbing feature of the state's budget process. The budget also included several million dollars in subsidies to "Non-State Agencies": local artistic and cultural organizations (most of which, coincidentally, are located in the districts of members of the appropriations committee or the majority party's leadership). There's no question that many of these organizations - including Wolf Trap in our back yard -- deserve our support. But these are the lean years. This could have been the year when we said to them:

"Look: we value your contribution to our quality of life, and in good times we'll be happy to help you out

"But these aren't good times. We have 80-year old parents of 50-year old retarded children who lie awake at night because they don't know what's going to happen to their kid when they can't take care of him any more. We have nursing homes that may have to shut their doors because the state isn't even paying them what it costs to care for their clients. We have kids in Virginia who may spend their school careers from kindergarten to senior year going to class in trailers, and we have students who might have to drop out of college because their tuition has gone up so much. The arts are worthy, but we have to look out for those folks first."

It's easier to do home cooking than to face up to those realities. In the end, those "Non-State Agency" items were approved. But, interestingly, a number of extremely conservative members noted "No" on some of them along with me. Maybe there's the making of an odd coalition here.

A disturbing feature of the budget was the degree to which the state balanced its books by short-changing local government. You'll recall that here in Virginia, Richmond keeps its cities and counties on an extremely short leash: at a committee meeting a few weeks ago, a senior member of the House proudly described local governments as "creatures of the General Assembly." This year, the budget decided to cut back on the creature's rations, in areas including funding of schools, public safety, and local government offices.

At the end of a long day on Thursday, I voted against a budget that I felt represented missed opportunities and misplaced priorities. I was one of 19 who did so. There are other stages in the budget process, and I hope it will get better.

The low point of the week occurred on Wednesday when one of the leading anti-abortion Delegates delivered to every Senator a letter calling their attention to the nine anti-choice bills sent them by the House. The letter included a small plastic replica of a fetus. Even the Delegate's supporters were repulsed.

The week ended on a high note with the Senate reversing itself and approving the nomination of a skilled environmentalist to the State Water Control Board. Public outcry may have played an important role in the change of heart. Sometimes we win one.

Stay tuned,

Bob Brink