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Redirected
Aggression
A
late-night partisan clash between two veteran
Northern Virginia
delegates last week revealed the bitterness
lingering from the Gilmore-Wilkins budget disaster
of 2001.
A
common human failing is to punish a person for the
sins of someone else. Social scientists label as
"redirected aggression" behavior in
which frustration manifests itself not against the
true cause of troubles, but against a target of
convenience. Redirected aggression is as plausible
an explanation as any as to why distrust and
animosity are running higher than ever between
Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner and the
Republican-controlled Virginia House of Delegates.
Budgetary
frustrations boiled over again in the evening
hours of April 2 as the House discussed dozens of
amendments sent down by Gov. Warner. Veteran Del.
Vincent R. Callahan, Jr., R-McLean, stood to
address the chamber in his role as chairman of the
House Appropriations Committee. In contrast to the
partisan sniping and moral pontificating prompted
by dozens of earlier amendments, Callahan raised
his voice to characterize Amendment No. 59 as
"the mother of all power grabs." His
comments had all the fury of a 35-year House
veteran scorned.
At
stake in the amendment, Callahan suggested, was
the balance of power between the executive and
legislative branches of Virginia government. The
Warner amendment, Callahan said, would irrevocably alter that
balance by allowing a governor to make future
budget reductions without regard for specific
conditions or restrictions in appropriations acts
passed by the General Assembly, and to refuse, as
Governor Warner has done since late in 2002, to
turn over to the General Assembly budget reduction
options solicited from agencies and departments.
Callahan called on the House to preserve its
prerogatives and power.
Appropriations
Committee members briefed on the amendment earlier
in the day playfully waved white handkerchiefs as
if in mock surrender. But Del. Kenneth R. Plum,
D-Reston, was not amused. He responded with all
the fervor of a 25-year House veteran rudely
tossed from the Appropriations Committee in 2001
by then Speaker of the House Vance Wilkins,
R-Amherst, for asking similar questions about the
role of the House in rubberstamping former Gov.
Jim Gilmore's budget politics. Had not the House
initiated the power grab,
Plum
asked, with its insistence on receiving the actual
working papers of the governor on budget
reductions and other matters, papers normally kept
confidential? Had not the House's own budget
amendments clawed first at long-established executive powers for political purposes?
The
two delegates locked horns about separation of
power questions that arise in the U.S.
Constitution and those of every state since James
Madison suggested three co-equal branches of
government in his "Virginia Plan." Since
the time of Thomas Jefferson (power in the
legislature to protect against an overbearing
executive) and John Adams (laws are a dead letter
until an administrator executes them), these have
been questions worth asking.
For
the record, the relative powers of the branches of
Commonwealth government appear to be simply stated
in Virginia's
constitution. Article III, for example, states the
"legislative, executive, and judicial
departments shall be separate and distinct"
for pragmatic reasons, "so that none exercise
the powers properly belonging to the others."
Other articles task the General Assembly with
creating administrative agencies and providing
authority and duties, and the Governor with
faithfully executing the laws, including gathering
information from agencies, departments and offices
on what and how they're doing.
Unfortunately
and painfully, as recent events have proven, the
power map isn't so simple. Jim Gilmore manipulated
for political purposes the 2000 and 2001 revenue
estimates and agency-spending plans on which
General Assembly budgets are predicated. Then
Republican Speaker of the House Vance Wilkins
established the precedent of subordinating an
independent House evaluation of revenues and
spending to a governor's political agenda. The
resultant budget gridlock eroded what trust did
exist among governor, House and Senate in 2001,
long before Mark Warner was elected Governor.
Observers,
in fact, credit Warner as governor with proceeding
in the most open, conservative, business-like
fashion possible in dealing with the revenue
drought and spending reductions required since he
took office in 2002. The General Assembly has
received exponentially more useful, regularly
updated information from the Warner administration
than it did from the Gilmore administration. But
unwilling to acknowledge its real frustration –
reckless, anti-tax members chewing away on
responsible, economic conservative members – and
with neither Gilmore or Wilkins around to attack
-- something which, in any event, would break the
Republican rule about talking negatively about
fellow party leaders -- the House continues to
redirect its aggression at Warner.
The
Callahan-Plum exchange on the floor of the House
of Delegates pulled the curtain back again on the
bitterness lingering still from the
Gilmore-Wilkins budget disaster of 2001. Attempts
to allow flexibility both for budget estimates and
for spending adjustments later in 2003 continue to
flounder on suspicion and mistrust.
But
the real question the
Northern Virginians
raised was not about a separation or balance of power
between executive and legislature. The question is
whether starving state government of revenue and
setting up continual budget reductions in core
service areas, from education to health to
transportation to higher education, is a workable
idea. Social scientists might summarize the
situation as "too many rats in the cage with
not enough food," a workable idea only for a
very short time.
For
Virginia
citizens, businesses and local governments, the
bottom line is the level of government service
coming out of Richmond,
not who has the power. Delegates and senators may
find that constitutional turf issues provide
little cover this election year for slashing core
services people that expect. Voters may end up
expressing a little aggression of their own. And
even redirection can't touch Gov. Warner, the one
incumbent who is not on the November ballot.
--
April
7, 2003
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