Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Greetings from Richmond!
The New Year holiday seemed to come and go in
a flash. Before I knew it, I was heading
south on I-95 for the 2008 Session of the
Virginia General Assembly. I look forward to
sending out weekly updates from the Capitol
to help keep you up-to-date on important
issues and to provide some insights that
don’t typically make front page news.
Wednesday was opening day – and many
of you may have caught the Governor’s
State of the Commonwealth address. However,
the real action was earlier in the day with
the adoption of the House
Rules, and then immediately after
the speech with the announcement of
committee assignments.
The House Rules are adopted on the first
day and govern everything from committee
size, to voting procedures, to the rules of
conduct. Not surprisingly, the rules can
sometimes generate a little controversy. One
such controversy involves a rule
allowing a subcommittee to kill a
bill without a recorded vote.
Subcommittees, usually made up of five to
nine members, are one of those necessary
concessions to keep business moving forward.
It seems intrinsically un-democratic,
however, to allow a small group to kill a
bill without accountability. The
counter-argument was that subcommittees
would lose too much time recording votes and
that quick action is needed to screen out
bills that simply don’t have a chance
of passage. If that was the explicit task
of a subcommittee, the argument might make
sense. However, I have seen a lot of bills
killed that very well may have had a chance
of passing in full committee. Either way,
citizens deserve to know who voted yes or no
on a particular measure. Delegate Ken Plum
from Fairfax led the charge to reverse the
rule, and I was happy to join in the effort.
Unfortunately, the amendment was defeated 45Y
to 54N.
Equally debated was a new proposal
to limit the number of bills that can be
introduced in off-year (odd year) sessions
to 10 per member. This is in
response to the enormous volume of
legislation introduced (1,599 bills in the
House last year alone!) – and our
limited capacity to give these bills just
consideration over 45 days. While I am a
little hesitant to limit our ability to
respond to constituent issues, the rule is
now adopted. At the very least, this will
encourage some members to better prioritize
the bills they are submitting.
Finally, on a positive note, the House
Rules continue to include
proportionate representation on
committees. This is an important
concept. In the past, the dominant party did
not always appoint committees with a
proportionate representation of Democrats
and Republicans. However, even with
Democrats picking up several seats, the
Republican leadership decided to continue
proportionate representation, and as a
result, I picked up a new committee seat.
Getting your committee assignments is a
little like Christmas – but there is
always the possibility of finding a lump of
coal in your stocking. For the last
two years, I have served on Agriculture,
Chesapeake, and Natural Resources (AC&NR)
and General Laws. AC&NR is self
explanatory, while General Laws deals with
tobacco, alcohol, gambling, the Freedom of
Information Act, housing, administrative
processes, and anything that doesn’t
fit well into another committee. Happily, I
was re-appointed to both of these committees.
I am also pleased to have been
assigned a third committee, the Committee on
Education. Given the importance of
education (not to mention that I have a
vested interest with two school-age
children), I couldn’t be more
thrilled. The only problem is that the
Education Committee meets on Monday and
Wednesday mornings, while AC&NR also
meets on Wednesday mornings. Overlapping
committees are relatively common (since it is
beyond our power to expand the work week).
However, it means that I will need to
determine which votes I need to be present
for, and which ones I will have to miss
– a position that I hate to be in. Such
is life in the General Assembly.
As always, please don’t hesitate to
contact me if you are interested in a
particular issue. And, watch your
mailbox this upcoming week for my 2008
Constituent Survey! You can also
fill out the survey on-line at my website.
Your feedback really matters.
Sincerely,
David Bulova
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