Speaker of the House Bill Howell has scheduled a session of the House of Delegates to start at 3pm Saturday. The significance of that? Oh, it’s just hours ahead of the JJ Dinner. Earlier, HB122 attempted to prohibit attendance at the JJ by Democratic legislators, but the bill failed.
Ridiculous.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Are you suggesting that they should not meet at all on Saturday? The JJ event starts with the Women’s Caucus Breakfast at 8:30. When should he have scheduled a meeting.
Vivian:
As far as I know, the session tomorrow is just a pro forma session at which only one member need be present. It is a procedural step (used often in the past) to ensure that bills reported out of committee today will be on first reading tomorrow/Saturday and ready for debate on Monday. This keeps the House from having to waive the constitutional readings on Monday and Tuesday.
There has been significant procedural hanky panky this session but I don’t believe that this can fairly be said to be part of it.
Claire
I have been under all day so I couldn’t follow what the House did today. I was told to expect a lot of “passed by for the day” action, so that tomorrow’s session would be longer.
Del. Lingamfelter’s local party is scheduled to have their Lincoln-Reagan dinner on Feb. 9. That bill would effectively prohibit every local legislator from attending – him included. Do these guys even THINK before they file this garbage?
Claire is correct. It’s just a pro-forma session to get bills advanced passed first readings. But yet another opportunity for Vivian to make a partisan snipe and then when she’s wrong, play the old “I was told differently” routine.
Brian- I have neither the time nor the inclination to spend a whole lot of energy of “sniping” at Republicans. I have a real job (something you might try someday) so when I post something like this, it is only because someone else alerted me to it.
In fact, I talked to more than one person after I posted this who said that the session was NOT going to be pro forma. So I guess we’ll have to see what happens.
BTW – now who’s leveling personal attacks?
I never attacked your job, so answer your own question about personal attacks.
crickets?
Um, you started by attacking me, making a claim with which you had no basis.
As for the Saturday session – I confirmed with a number of legislators again Saturday night that the session was scheduled to be a regular session until Ward Armstrong had a sit-down with Bill Howell, reminding him that not even Vance Wilkins had done something like this. Howell not only backed off, but rescheduled the start to 1pm.
But it has basis now. You were wrong, and instead of simply telling Claire that she was right and you were wrong, you get opinions after the fact and put all the responsibility on your sources. Your headline “House Republicans: New Tricks” is misleading because there weren’t any tricks, and Claire told you how often Saturday sessions are before crossover.
And even now after nothing happened, you still can’t bring yourself to say you were wrong.
“I was told to expect a lot of “passed by for the day” action, so that tomorrow’s session would be longer.” Wrong.
“In fact, I talked to more than one person after I posted this who said that the session was NOT going to be pro forma. So I guess we’ll have to see what happens.”
What happened was the session was pro-forma just like Claire and I said it was. But of course you were right all along, right?
No it doesn’t. At the time I posted it, the information was correct. At the time Claire posted her information (which, by the way, was prefaced with “as far as I know”), it was correct. Claire’s comments of Saturday sessions before crossover was exactly the information that I was given that would be used as an excuse for the session being a long one.
What I wrote was accurate at the time it was written.