Giesen Perspective

The Giesen Perspective—The Same Struggle with two Different Approaches

DATE: April 10, 2006

THE MEETING SITUATION

The media seems to be giving the legislators “down the country” for not meeting in the Special Session called by the Governor. If media and editorial writers have been noting the lack of meetings to date, they’ll probably have a field day with the scheduled meetings this coming week.

The sessions of both the House and Senate called for Monday, the 10^th have now been changed to “pro forma” sessions. But there is hope! The House is now scheduled to have a full session at 5 pm on Tuesday, April 11 and at 10 am on Wednesday. The Senate will convene at 12 noon on Wednesday. The Senate Committee on Finance will meet in the afternoon on Tuesday and on Wednesday following the noon session. The Wednesday afternoon meeting will be with the Senate Transportation Committee, and the full Senate will reconvene later in the day.

Why will the media have a field day with these meetings? After all, the legislators are getting together and talking. The reason is simply this -- these meetings will again, in all probability, be “posturing sessions” for both houses. There may be some actions but most of it will be one house rejecting the other’s bills and little progress will be made.

The probable scenario will be: On Tuesday’s evening meeting the House will reject the Senate’s substitute to HB 5001. This rejection may be by a vote but will more likely by a challenge by some delegate (Delegate Bob Marshall comes to mind) as to the germaneness of the amendments placed on the bill by the “other house!”

HB 5001 was sent to the Senate by the House as the “caboose bill” just dealing some tinkering with the budget for the balance of FY 06. The House’s reasoning for sending only this bill to the Senate-- Why, “…let’s get the rest of this year settled and then we can concentrate on the next biennial budget.” As you will recall from the March 30 Giesen Perspective, the Senate has vastly amended the bill (as the only vehicle they had before them at the time). The Senate Substitute for HB 5001 is now the Senate’s version of the caboose bill AND the 2006-2008 Appropriations Act as reported by the Senate on Feb. 19 as SB 30 AND the newest Senate’s transportation plan including the tax increases needed to support this plan.

If you were the Speaker of the House and had already ruled that similar amendments offered on the House floor by some minority party members were not germane to this bill, how would you rule on the Senate’s amendments if such a question was raised? That procedure shouldn’t take long unless the Democrats decide to debate the issue at length, which they may do.

The Wednesday morning session of the House, I suspect, will see the 2006-2008 Budget Bill (HB 5002), which the House Appropriations Committee passed earlier this week, considered by the full House with the bill being in its debatable and amendable stage (this is considered the second reading). The first reading of the bill will be on Tuesday evening when the committee report will be read. With the waving of the constitutional waiting period of one day for the third reading of the bill, the Senate should receive HB 5002 for consideration at its high noon meeting Wednesday. The bill, in all likelihood, will be sent to the Senate Finance Committee which will meet with the Senate Transportation Committee to consider it. Want to bet it won’t get amended extensively by these two committees meeting in concert?

If you want to bet that way I feel pretty certain I can find you lots of takers!

The bottom line is that by late Wednesday the General Assembly should be back where it was on March 11, with a bill—HB 5002—on which both houses will insist on its version and the conferees will actually have an “official vehicle” about which to confer. Will they have made any progress?

TWO DIFFERENT APPROACHES

Practically every legislator says there is a transportation crisis in Virginia. Let’s review the two approaches to funding a solution to this problem.

The House says we have a large surplus. We raised taxes two years ago and the economy remains strong and the money is pouring in. Our citizens do not want higher taxes. We should use part of the extra funds raised in what is called the general fund (GF) portion of the budget. The plan put forth by the Republican majority in the House does just that. It allocates more than $600 million of GF dollars for transportation in FY 07 and about $350 million in the “out years—FY 08, 09 and 10.

The Senate and the Governor both maintain the transportation funding solution has to have dedicated, sustainable sources of revenue. They claim taking GF dollars for transportation makes transportation needs compete with the needs of public education, higher education, public safety, natural resources, human services, et cetera, et cetera, and so forth.

Now which plan do you think the citizens of the Commonwealth would most readily endorse? Has the public responded to the Governor’s telephone blitzes and his town meetings? It depends on who you ask. In an informal survey (telephone calls by me) I have learned that House members are getting phone calls saying, “Don’t raise my taxes!” Senate members, meanwhile, say their constituents are telling them to, “…fix the transportation problem and if it needs new taxes to do it right, so be it!”

One Senator in an op-ed noted he utilized a survey early in the session to find out how his constituents felt. From the responses he received, 75 percent said transportation improvement was a key issue for them. Then 91% stated budgetary funds should not be diverted “from public and higher education, the environment and health care to fund transportation improvements.”

One House member reported a constituent stopped him on the street just yesterday and emphatically said, “You know I don’t write letters or send e-mails, but let me tell you if you vote for a tax increase, I’ll come around when you get home and personally kick you in the a--!” This Delegate says he got the message.

So perhaps those with different approaches are hearing what they want to hear to support their position. But, golly, you might say, the Governor is putting a lot of energy into stressing how the House Plan will impact funding for education, etc. In fact he notes in one of his ads how the House Plan “cuts” funding for these other essential services. But a recent newspaper article by a delegate (one of the 2004 solution-rendering Republicans) stressed, “…the implication that the House budget would cut education and other core services is incorrect. The House budget over the biennium increases higher education funding for colleges and universities by more than $450 million, including a new research initiative; k-12 funding by $1.5 billion; health-care spending by $755.5 million; and public safety funding by $400 million…”

Now who’s right? Well they both are right and they are both misleading. If you start with what was appropriated in the 2004-2006 biennial budget for those services, as the House does, then the increases they claim they have in their version of the 2006-2008 budget, are accurate. BUT if you start with the budget which Governor Warner introduced, as Governor Kaine does, then there are cuts to these services in the House budget. The problem is neither position is being presented in a clear and understandable way to the general public. Sure, it is hard to explain in relatively simple terms. So those with opposite views tend to “stretch the truth, slightly!”

None the less, the public doesn’t seem to be taking to heart Kaine’s message of “call your delegates and ask them to support the Senate or the Governor’s transportation plan.” At least if they are doing so, that’s not the message that’s being heard. Republican leaders in the House seem to be more determined than they were at the first of the session, to report a budget “with NO TAX INCREASE IN IT!”

The Senate Leaders, along with the Governor, appear to be more adamant than they were three weeks ago, to make certain the transportation funds are sustainable for future years.

So, my prediction is, there will not be much progress made toward a compromise this coming week. You may ask, what about in future weeks? It is doubtful. Bob Gibson, a political writer for the Charlottesville Daily Progress, in an April 2 column summed the situation up when he started his analysis with these words, “Do House and Senate negotiators and leaders trust each other enough to work together to solve the state’s budget impasse? Maybe and maybe not.”

Then he continued, “A level of trust that once existed between the House and Senate seems to have collapsed.” From personal experience I agree with Bob’s statement. He finds the reason for this in the fact that there is now permanent campaigning. He stresses, “These days, anything that is said on one side or another of a political debate about taxes can be expected to undergo examination for radioactivity, for the twisting out of context and for the kind of cloning that would put South Korean dog scientists to shame.

“Each side twists and spins the facts in ways guaranteed to annoy, and possibly enrage, folks on the other side.”

This is now, unfortunately, happening, almost to the nth degree, in this state’s transportation debate.

Bob goes on to quote Larry Sabato from UVa’s Center for Politics who notes this is a national trend. “News coverage tends to highlight the negative, not the positive, which contributes to the atmosphere,” Larry said. Sabato then sums it up by emphasizing that since the 1990s, “…the rhetoric escalated, the partisanship intensified and the nastiness became commonplace. Bipartisan compromises became rare and difficult. Friendly adversaries became enemies in the legislature and outside of it. Ideology became rigid. And the politics of personal destruction in both parties became the norm.”

Bob concludes his insightful column with this sentence, “these national trends—and the erosion of trust that accompanies them—are making the crafting of a state budget a prolonged and petty exercise.”

In reading this I became acutely aware that I agreed whole heartily with it. This column tends to focus on why I began to find serving in the Assembly in the mid ‘90s rather distasteful.

Unless the conferees and the legislative leaders begin to reestablish some trust among themselves it could be a long hot spring and summer!

Links to Previous Giesen Perspectives:

Arthur R. Giesen, Jr., fondly known as Pete, served in the Virginia House of Delegates for over 30 years. He represented the citizens of the Central Shenandoah Valley surviving four different district realignments. During his career he represented Augusta, Bath, Highland and part of Rockingham County and the Cities of Staunton and Waynesboro.

Following his career as an elected official, Pete assisted Lt. Governor John H. Hager as his Chief of Staff.

Pete now keeps an eye on Virginia government and assists many clients with his unique perspective on the workings of the Virginia General Assembly and its relationship with the other branches of state government.