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Fewer
Resolutions, More Resolve
A
deluge
of silly bills is costing taxpayers money and making
the General Assembly less effective.
The
General Assembly’s bill room is choked with over 2,600
measures, many so breathtakingly inconsequential and
stunningly oblivious to economic reality that one
wonders if members have forgotten that legislative
service is serious business.
Virginia
school
children have learned for years about Delegate
Accomack Lee, a fictional member of the Virginia
General Assembly. I’ve
always envisioned Delegate Lee in his three-cornered
hat riding a horse across our Commonwealth ready to
do the people’s business in a people’s legislature.
For
the 2003 session of the General Assembly, the
people’s business is the state budget.
When legislators raised their hands last
month to take the oath of office, they should have
been committing themselves to work with the Warner
administration to cut state spending while assuring a
level of service that Virginians are willing to
accept without a tax increase.
On
his way to the Capitol, Accomack got hijacked. His saddlebags got stuffed with trifles, he
decided to run state agencies himself, and he
decided to stay all year. Maybe Accomack just wants to have something
to show for his time in
Richmond
other than a gnawed swizzle stick.
So
far this session, the rocks have been the big
losers. In
the legislative version of animal, vegetable, or
mineral, the rocks couldn’t be outdone by earlier
legislatures' designation of state animals such as
the state dog, the state fish, and the state insect.
So this year bills were introduced to
designate a state mineral (goosecreekite), a state
rock (coal), and a state gem (kyanite).
These bills were withdrawn by the patron,
apparently at the wise counsel of House Speaker
William J. Howell, R-Fredericksburg, but not until
they’d been drafted, printed, reviewed by state
agencies for fiscal impact, and sent to committee.
Some
bills are just plain curious.
Bigamy must be breaking out all over the
Commonwealth because this year we needed a bill
clarifying the venue for bigamy prosecutions. Weeds and dogs at play must be threatening
Northern
Virginia
— one legislator wants to designate English Ivy as
a noxious weed and another wants to restrict the
location of “dog recreation facilities.” Another legislator seeks to ban a common and
widely used chemical. Coaches will be relieved to know that
application of protective tape to an uninjured
player will soon
be legal.
Emergency
legislation was needed to bail out miscreant
hair-braiders.
Some
measures have alarming fiscal impacts.
One bill proposes to waive fees for
background checks for retired and active duty
military personnel who apply for concealed weapon
permits. There
are hundreds of thousands of active and retired
military personnel in
Virginia.
Many localities require background checks.
Under this bill, the Commonwealth would have
to pay the FBI $24 per background check. You do the
math.
Bills
like these — bills that will become real live
statutes in code books — don’t even began to
illustrate how General Assembly members are spending
their time. At
my last count, legislators had introduced over 150
commending resolutions.
The sports page inspires dozens of
resolutions commending an assortment of local
football, softball, baseball, track and field,
rifle, tennis, and golf teams.
Darrell Green and Alonzo Mourning are singled
out for special attention.
Then
there’s history — commemorating the 40th
anniversary of Virginia Beach, the 40th anniversary
of Chesapeake, the 30th anniversary of
Secretariat’s triple crown win (this one gets the
sports enthusiasts too), the 50th anniversary of
George C. Marshall’s Nobel Peace Prize, the 100th
anniversary of the Virginia Nurse Practice Act, and
the 100th anniversary of the Retail Alliance.
More
resolutions designate days or weeks or months for
certain causes — Backpack Safety Month, National
Marrow Awareness Month, Bataan Day of Valor. The
latter was so important it got resolutions in both
chambers. Apparently,
a cause’s worth is measured not by whether it does
good but whether a special license plate gets
affixed to a Buick. Other
resolutions recognize Virginians for notable feats
and service to the state and community.
State
agencies, in shock from fiscal cuts and layoffs and
directed to do only what’s necessary, are being
assigned pet projects and research assignments.
There’s a bill to create an state
agency-led Invasive Species Council (presumably to
lead an all-out attack on English Ivy), and
resolutions directing the Department of Game and
Inland Fisheries to study hunting with dogs, the
Virginia Museum of Transportation to study a
satellite museum in Clifton Forge, and the Board of
Education to study the “disaggregated data and
reporting requirements” of a federal education
law.
Here’s
a good idea. The
Department of Environmental Quality lost 21 percent
of its funding. It
cut funding for the Chesapeake Bay, for water pollution monitoring, for inspections,
and for pollution prevention. Let’s now direct
that strapped agency to develop a “cathode ray
tube recycling program” and an “electronic
equipment recycling program.”
General
Assembly service is no longer a quaint
avocation — it’s a vocation.
No longer a winter session only, study
committees on every conceivable topic — some that
look like make-work — meet year round.
What’s the value of a 10-member legislative
commission to study upcoming changes in federal
accounting regulations?
Why a 19-member lead paint commission, first
created in 1993, whose major accomplishment seems to
be having written a letter to the federal government
asking for money?
In this budgetary climate, do we need
subcommittees to study “access to and costs of
oral health care,” “computer physician order
entry systems to reduce medication errors,” and
“obstacles to telecommuting?”
This
imbroglio of inconsequentiality might be dismissed
like a harmless bad word slipping from a child’s
lips, except that taxpayers’ money is being used
for these exercises. Legislative
staffers are paid money to draft bills, printers to
print hundreds of copies, state agency employees to
review all measures for impact, and legislative time
(including travel expenses and per diem payments for
study commissions) is taken up to consider them.
Some measures go to committees where
battalions of state employees listen and comment.
Every
moment devoted to these measures isn’t available
for serious work. When
our government is facing the worst financial
situation in a generation, do we need to spend one
extra nickel on the electricity required to power
the voting machines in the chambers for matters that
don’t advance the public weal?
This
year’s session isn’t entirely to blame; the
number of measures has continued on a steady march
upward for years. The
problem is in both chambers, in both parties, and in
demanding short-sighted constituents and interest
groups. From
time to time, legislative leaders have tried to slow
the deluge of legislation with bill limits,
moratoria, and gentle persuasion. Ultimately though,
it’s up to individual legislators to remember that
they are members of one of the world’s oldest and
most respected bodies and to live up to that
heritage.
--
February
3, 2003
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