Governors – and voters – pushed aside

My latest op-ed, title above, appeared in The Virginian-Pilot this morning.  The topic is one that has bothered me for a long time: the timing of the budget. Virginia clings to the outmoded single term governor and then further handicaps him by essentially allowing him to implement only one budget during his term.

Writing when events are going on around you can sometimes be a challenge. Take, for example, SB912, which changed the introduction of the biennial budget from the even years to the odd years. The bill passed the Senate 1/24, but was reconsidered. I understand it was because it put the budget introduction, where the heavy lifting gets done, into the short session. So there was a need to switch the sessions, which can only be done by constitutional amendment. So SJ401 was introduced to switch the sessions. That bill, after the second reading, was sent back to the Senate P&E committee to die.

I expected, then, that SB912 would suffer a similar fate but that didn’t happen. The Senate actually passed SB912 yesterday, with LG Bill Bolling – his eyes firmly fixed on being the next governor of Virginia – passing the tie-breaking vote. So the Senate has sent to the House a bill that essentially has the work of the long session shoved into the short session. Expect the House to kill the bill.

But this ignores the problem.  Essentially, it kicks the ball down the field another two years at the earliest, because a constitutional amendment requires that the legislature pass the measure twice – with an election in between. It could very well pass in 2013 and then fail in 2014, something we witnessed on the homestead exemption in 2007/2008. In any case, the next governor will in the same position as the current and previous governors: one budget in his single term.

A big shoutout to my Senator Ralph Northam who voted against recommitting SJ401 to committee and who also voted in favor of SB912. There are many times when Ralph and I don’t see eye-to-eye but this isn’t one of those times. Thanks, Senator, for looking out for the voters of Virginia.