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Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

May 10, 2004

The session that was

By Preston Bryant
ROANOKE.COM COLUMNIST

Who’d have thought, back in January, that the 2004 General Assembly session would stretch well into May before final adjournment? The 115 days it’d take the House of Delegates and Senate to act on more than 3,100 bills and resolutions as well as pass a new two-year budget – all of which should’ve been done in 60 days – should provide ample explanation for so many heads hung low.

Of course, the fate of most all of those thousands of bills and resolutions was indeed decided within the normal two-month time allotment. It was the budget-related bills that pushed the legislature into a start-and-stop overtime that kept delegates and senators making sporadic trips back to the Capitol.

So what are we to make of it all? What caused the debacle? What ended it? What will keep it from happening again?

Well, every legislator, pundit, and half-awake observer responds with rolled eyes when asked about the session that just wouldn’t end. Polls taken throughout it all generally reflected a pox-on-everybody’s-house kind of attitude. The polls also suggested that Virginians had at least an average understanding of the state’s fiscal woes and were open to modest revenue increases that could be legitimately justified. In no way, however, are Virginians accepting of out-of-sight tax hikes – never have been, never will be. They like a restrained state government, a position properly reflective of our right-of-center electorate.

It’s likely that a poll taken in the session’s aftermath would still cast aspersions on anyone who had a hand in dragging it out nearly twice its usual time. It’s also likely that most folks – if told of the various tax cuts that offset any tax hikes – would give an okay nod to the compromise revenue plan that led to a budget being settled.

There’s seemingly equal thought out there on whether the kind of House-Senate standoff that’s stalled the legislature’s normal processes could be repeated. Some say that once something like this has happened, it can certainly happen again. Doing the once unthinkable no longer makes it unthinkable. On the other hand, there are folks who were trapped in the middle of the stalemate who have resolved to avoid a repeat at all costs.

So what are the lessons to be learned? And what really did happen to cause the stare-down that should be avoided in the future?

First of all, cases for tax hikes should be made during electoral campaigns. No candidate, whether incumbent or challenger, Republican, Democrat, or independent, for the House or Senate really took such a proposition to voters before November’s all-inclusive assembly elections. Further, Gov. Mark Warner – who had suggested increased revenues were needed – declined to release the details of what would be his billion-dollar-plus tax hike before the fall’s voting. Let’s remember that Virginians are pretty smart people, and they deserve to have put before them an intellectually honest presentation of facts. That legislative candidates (especially incumbent senators) and the governor kept tax-increase plans under a pre-election bushel opened themselves – and the process – to criticisms that could’ve been avoided.

Second, it’s not appropriate for a governor – or a legislature, for that matter – to mix revenue items in an appropriations bill. When Warner presented his proposed budget to legislators in mid-December, it was chockfull of tax policy. While revenue boosts have on odd occasions in the past been included in budgets, it’s certainly not the norm to riddle it with sweeping tax-code changes. Traditionally, revenue bills and appropriations bills are kept separate, largely for constitutional reasons. Warner’s mixing them irritated legislators weeks before the ’04 session even began, irritations that ultimately led to a lawsuit being filed over the matter by a few legislators against Warner and others.

Third, House-Senate budget negotiations typically begin from a reasonable point. This year, the two sides were nearly $4 billion apart from the get-go, an unprecedented gulf. And the policies embedded in each chamber’s version of the budget were as different as the numbers themselves, a phenomenon that’d only complicate attempts to reconcile the disparately dispersed dollars. It should go without saying that every effort should be made by the House and Senate to offer up spending plans that are both practical and politically feasible. Doing so would certainly make end-of-session negotiations smoother than they were this year.

It was on numerous occasions that House and Senate budget negotiators indicated that their attempts to resolve spending differences were stalled, if not irreparably broken. Personalities clashed. Philosophies differed. Trust was in short supply.

In the meantime, the ongoing standoff, unprecedented in length, pushed local governments and school divisions – heavily dependent on state funding – to the wall. The state’s nearly 100,000-person workforce grew insecure. The reliability of Medicaid-based health care would be questioned. And the Old Dominion’s good name and creditworthiness would continue to be jeopardized.

It was only under such circumstances, rare indeed, that an alternative resolution was offered, when what many call the Commonsense Caucus rose from the backbenches to show another way and break the impasse. Since the budget negotiators’ breakdown was revenue-based – they couldn’t agree on how much money to spend – the resolution to it would be, too.

The compromise tax package passed by the House and Senate was a generally balanced one – it’s justifiable and doesn’t stray into altitudes most Virginians would call unacceptable. The media tend to focus on the half-penny sales tax and cigarette tax increases, often failing to mention that every single Virginian gets an income tax cut and that there’s a total repeal of the state’s share of the sales tax on groceries. They also don’t typically report that the “marriage penalty” is totally eliminated (current law gives two individual tax filers a better break than a married couple) and that 140,000 of the poorest workers will no longer have to file a tax return.

There are still a number of delegates and senators, however, who, despite $6 billion in cuts and shifts over the past few years, think the budget is based on an unnecessary tax hike and is “bloated” with excesses, and for that general reason slammed last week’s compromise. Presumably, they believe, adequately funding public schools is an excess, as is boosting the pay of sheriffs’ deputies, some of whom qualify for food stamps. It’s presumed, too, that driving more bucks to our colleges and universities so that they can accommodate the tidal wave of new students headed their way is an excessive expenditure, just like providing more reasonable Medicaid payments to hospitals and docs who take care of the less fortunate among us. It’s also assumed that some would like to see state employees go yet another year without a pay increase.

Oh, there are plenty of lessons to be learned, criticisms to be leveled, and recognized missteps to be avoided in the future. The past is only as instructive as it is fairly assessed.

This is the session that was. Let’s hope it’s a session that never again will be.

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