Saturday, The Virginian-Pilot profiled the two candidates vying to represent the 21st House district in Virginia Beach: incumbent Democrat Bobby Mathieson and Republican challenger Ron Villaneuva. While there are differences in their approaches, both candidates agree that transportation is a challenging issue for the General Assembly.
Much of the article focuses on the charges the candidates have made of each other’s records. Mathieson charges that Villaneuva “has been late or absent to 105 meetings,” while Villaneuva charges Mathieson hasn’t been very successful in getting legislation passed.
With four children and his full-time job as the executive vice president of a government tactical and special operations supplier, Villanueva said it can be difficult to be on time to all the council briefing sessions, during which issues are discussed but no votes taken. Villanueva said he’s there for the votes…
As I commented on the article, this passage raised two questions for me. First, if he can’t make the briefing sessions, is Villaneuva voting without all of the facts?
Second, if he is so busy, how will he have time to serve in the legislature and to serve the citizens of the 21st? I believe the demands on a legislator’s time are significant enough to warrant a full-time legislature.
That Villanueva has difficulty making meetings in his home city make me wonder how he will be able to make the trips back and forth to Richmond for those out-of-session committee meetings that it seems legislators often have to attend.
I hope the voters in the 21st take this into consideration when choosing their representative.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Vivian:
Full-time legislatures? There isn’t enough wealth generated to support full-time politicians in the General Assembly. Perhaps if there were more emphasis on priorities and limited committee agendas the result would yield in efficient, meaningful legislation. Too much time and effort is wasted on redundancy and meaningless jabber. If anything, less time should be allocated for committee and floor sessions so that limited time managing constraints would yield effective dialog and less positioning.
Further, I am quite disappointed transportation has become the over-emphasized leading issue in the 2009 campaigns. It is quite ironic to address possible transportation solutions when in reality the Commonwealth is experiencing severe revenue shortfalls and cannot honor current commitments.
Perhaps solutions for growing unemployment figures supplemented with growing underemployment, shortened hours and furloughs, part-time for full=time positions would be a more realistic issue.
A full time legislature is long overdue in Virginia. Just look at the results of this part time mess, if you need evidence. People that have their heads in the sand, seldom see the problems right in front of them.
For those with a myopic view of Virginia, Transportation probably wouldn’t seem front and center. However, for those of us who travel the roads, to and from work, every day, its way past the time to get it fixed. These assinine regional plans only balkanize Virginia. Time for a statewide plan, that will fix it, once and for all. Taking money from schools and public safety is not the solution.
Last time we had any progress on transportation was 1986 under Governor (democrat) Baliles who also had a House and Senate controlled by his party. Time for some big changes in Richmond and at least consderation of a full time legislature should be one of those changes. The very fact that this part time approach isn’t working, should be enough realism to convince even the most hardened ostrich of the problem.
Just think how much damage they could do if that was a full-time job!
Vivian, you really should point out that Rob was actually present for 93 or 97% of council meetings where voting took place. That number Mathieson points out is a total stretch. The council has hundreds of meetings behind closed doors, not open to the public, where no votes are discussed. These are the ones Ron always misses. For nearly every actual council meeting, Ron was there. When the average voter thinks council meeting, they think that one night a week where every gets together, citizens address the council, and votes are taken. Not the close door planning meetings.
My apologies, you did point out that they were briefing meetings, but not Ron’s attendance record at actual meetings.
Just the same, briefings are given on paper. Not everyone needs to have them explained by someone else. That being said, given the sad state of Virginia Beach, it would seem to me those planning meetings are counter productive. I’m not defending Ron, but for Mathieson to stretch the truth on that absentee number and make voters thing Ron never attended voting meetings is pretty sad. Its also sad that Virginia Beach city council is mostly a group of fools; that’s life though.
If the briefings were just on paper, there would be no need for the meetings. So my question still stands: is he making decisions without all of the facts?
I can’t comment on the VB Council – after all, I’ve got the Norfolk Council to look at 😦