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Barnie Day was a Democratic delegate from Patrick County from his election in 1997 through the 2001 session. A former county administrator and business owner, he is now a banker.
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House Speaker William Howell threw down an election-eve gauntlet on tax reform, in effect telling the board of directors of the Virginia State Chamber of Commerce: no net tax increases. Given what happened on Election Day in Fairfax County, he may wish he had waited.
His speech set into stone the triangle -- Warner, Chichester, Howell -- that will define the debate parameters and dominate the coming session of the General Assembly. (Think of the three sides of this triangle as: House and Senate Democrats, centrist House and Senate Republicans, and Howell and the Anti-Tax Right.)
The question is a simple one: do we increase revenues? In broad strokes, the debate will go like this: Warner and Chichester, will say, ‘Yeah, we will.’ Howell will counter with, ‘No, we won’t.’
Politics and policy always intermingle and, believe me, all the players in this one are sharp discerners of nuance -- but this one won’t have the clean lines you usually see. This one will have coalitions and alliances that will morph and change color daily on the policy-politics axis. It will be Warner and Chichester on policy, Chichester and Howell on politics.
Make no mistake about this: the Republican majority will, at all costs, try to avoid the so-called ‘train wreck’ of a budget stand-off that characterized their first shot at majority government during the last two years of the Gilmore Administration.
Politically, Warner will win either way. If he gets what he wants, he has shown ‘leadership’ and his non-partisan approach to the job is vindicated. If he doesn’t, who is to blame? You got it. The Republican majority.
If Howell’s intent was to galvanize the anti-taxers going in to Election Tuesday, the evidence is that it didn’t work.
The post-election reading of the tea leaves continues, everyone sifting the data for that harbinger of things to come. Most observers immediately looked -- mistakenly -- to the House and Senate races.
Statewide, two-thirds of the races were uncontested but Democrats did make significant, if modest, gains in the House, picking up the Eastern Shore seat vacated by retiring Bob Bloxom, the 35th District seat in Northern Virginia left vacant by Jeanmarie Devolites (R), who moved up to the Senate, and Republican Tom Bolvin’s 43rd District seat, also in Northern Virginia. In that one, Mark Sickles defeated Bolvin in a re-match of two years ago.
Three points here: (1) the Democratic gain was the first net gain for the Dems in 25 years or so; (2) as small as it was, it is still enough to force, under existing House rules of governance, the addition of a Democrat to most of the House committees, including Appropriations; and (3) House Speaker Bill Howell is denied a veto-proof majority.
Politically, the most significant Election Day track was laid down in affluent Fairfax County. Again, Warner was the clear winner. In a million-dollar-plus campaign for the chairmanship of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Democrat Gerald E. Connally and his schools and roads gang beat Republican Mychele Brickner and her anti-taxers. Fairfax property values -- and local taxes -- are up over 50% during the past four years. Yet, in every single instance, voters rejected local candidates tied to ‘cap-the-tax’ rhetoric.
Don’t think for one second that the significance of what happened locally in Fairfax County will be lost on any of the Warner-Chichester-Howell players in the coming debate on tax reform. They can read tea leaves with the best of them.
Warner’s hand is clearly strengthened, as is Chichester’s, but only if the choices can be articulated in the hallways of Richmond as well as they were at the intersections and shopping malls of Fairfax.
Copyright 2003