Tommy Denton

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As a Catholic whose attention has been riveted on the recently adjourned General Assembly session, Gov. Tim Kaine may have let his Lenten intentions slide while he was distracted by so many lawmakers' transgressions against the public interest.

Lord knows, he must have been driven toward what his faith tradition refers to as the near occasion of sin by so many betrayals of the body politic, but Kaine's somewhat optimistic, charitable comments shortly after the closing gavel suggested that the governor may wish to give up silver linings for Lent, and perhaps for the remainder of his term.

"On the budget and legislative initiatives I feel pretty good," Kaine said optimistically Saturday. "I'm happy that at least I have the opportunity with the transportation plan to make the fixes we need so that the plan can be a meaningful one for all Virginians."

Yes, but his collaborators in the House of Delegates have demonstrated time and again for the last year and a half just what contempt they have for further "compromise" that would allow the state to apply those much-needed, substantial "fixes."

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, insisted that the bill sent to the governor was the epitome of generous compromise. Griffith warned darkly that the governor should expel any lingering thoughts of crafting substantive amendments, such as preventing the House's proposed raid on the General Fund to the tune of nearly $185 million a year and proposing instead a revenue stream actually sufficient to pay for the highway, rail and port enhancements critical to Virginia's future.

No dictionary confuses "compromise" as a synonym for the capitulation demanded by the House leadership. For nearly two years, the myopic obstructionism of the renegades of reaction has produced a scorched-earth campaign to prevent a comprehensive statewide transportation plan.

Naturally, the no-tax, no-how crowd has put a glittering spin on the fiscal short-sheeting of a worthy transportation plan. As Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Prince William County, put it, "As someone who has really, really been worried that we need to get beyond this transportation fight, today [Saturday] ... was a great day."

Such cavalier indulgence in reflexive indifference is akin to the naïve expression of giddy admiration for the gleaming fur coats of the herd of lemmings stampeding the clueless admirer over the edge of a cliff.

Yet another herd of mischievous rodents approaches another precipice, except that the proposed return -- sort of -- to state electricity regulation seems to be proceeding as if the lemmings have put padded slippers on their scurrying little paws.

Most of the lawmakers, not to mention the general public, paid precious little attention to the craven legislative submission to the utility industry led by Dominion Power. It's a complex bill, but its benefactors got what they sought. When rates escalate sharply, with inadequate scrutiny or insufficient justification or recourse, then Virginians may be forgiven for inquiring testily why so few of their representatives paid enough attention to act on their behalf.

Kaine should veto the sellout and strike a blow for the public good by demanding that the matter be deferred to another legislative session where it can be subjected to the full, serious scrutiny it deserves.

Like all convocations of legislative bodies, the regular 2007 session of the Virginia General Assembly has been a commingling of mercy, mischief and malice. Some few of the multitude of bills passed related to critical matters; most are routinely mundane, others silly. But an inherent thread of obstructionism on the truly critical ones has been evident in the darker counsels of the House of Delegates for the last few years.

On transportation, even conservative pillars in the Senate like John Chichester, R-Northumberland County, have been slandered for defending principles of fiscal prudence and stewardship of the public trust now and in the future -- what James Madison characterized as providing for the common welfare under the generational compact.

Kaine has his hands full as a governor who, Virginians must hope, will demand from recalcitrant lawmakers more than the thread-thin silver lining of evasive, empty promises. If those legislators refuse, the voters should give them up -- not just for Lent, but give them up for good at the polls next November.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.