Part deux

by Gordon C. Morse

Let me pick up where I left off last, because these process/procedure questions sit at the heart of representative democracy. It matters how you get there and keeping proper order isn’t an idle, wonky issue. It’s pretty much the only way we avoid settling things in the streets.

It’s also kind of fun to argue about this stuff – and argue we should.

“I’ve been in the Senate since 1992,” Senator Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, told The Virginian-Pilot. “For the governor, or the attorney general, or even the secretary of education, to tell board members that they can stay anyway no matter what we say — it doesn’t work like that. That’s not what the constitution requires us to do.”

The constitution? You mean, Virginia’s constitution? If Lucas thinks that the Virginia Constitution – in letter and spirit – means for a legislative committee, on its lonesome, to show up on a June day in Richmond and render final judgment on the governor’s appointments to the governing boards of Virginia’s colleges and universities then she’s … well, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, as we said as kids.

What Louise et al are inching up to is the establishment of a full-time, professional legislature, an idea that was debated at length in 1969 during the run-up to the constitutional revisions of 1970. That idea was defeated, but here is an example of the prevailing sentiment as expressed on the Senate floor by Sen. Bill Stone of Martinsville.

“I know you have heard more from me today than you ought to, but on this one issue I want the record crystal clear where Bill Stone stands. If the Breeden amendment passes then in 10 years you’re going to have two classes of people in this legislature, only the rich who can afford to come down here every year and the poor who want a professional job. You’re going to have big office buildings going up here and will be paying senators $15,000 or $20,000 a year, with two or three assistants, four or five staff and a great big office building.”

Stone spoke in opposition to annual legislative sessions and lost on that question.

But Stone got some of this right, in that the political pressure towards making the Virginia General Assembly a full-time proposition would not abate in the years ahead. While we’ve seen no improvement in legislative compensation, the General Assembly is now on its second great big office building and the staffs have ballooned to the point that many legislators have a “chief-of-staff.”

Are we getting closer to establishing the Virginia legislature as a full-time thing? Sure we are. In a closed, secret vote, would you get a positive response for that proposition among the 140 lawmakers? I think perhaps you might. Many of these legislators appear to be doing this full-time already.

Stone was an old-guard (very) stalwart of the Byrd Organization and a Southside power. He chaired Senate Courts of Justice and his departure from this world inspired mixed reviews. I remember because I was an employee of the Virginia Senate in 1977, working for the senator who replaced Stone.

That was a heady time in the Virginia Senate, because the divisions were ideological, geographical, cultural, you name it. It became discordant, you know. So much so that in late November, 1975, a majority of Senate Democrats stole up to Charlottesville and did a number on Richmond Sen. Ed Willey, the Senate President Pro Tempore.

Writing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (this was back when Richmond still had daily newspapers), Shelley Rolfe called this conspiratorial collaboration a “new, moderate power structure” and Willey was victim number one.

That “structure” made Adelard L. Brault of Fairfax the new majority leader. But it came with a half-life. In cahoots with dear Senator Willey, Sen. Hunter B. Andrews of Hampton quietly, resolutely, plotted to undo Abe as leader and got ‘er done. Abe – pissed to a fare-thee-well — later moved to Florida.

It was all something to witness and, as a source of human dramatic entertainment, endeared me to the Virginia Senate forever.

There were lessons — lessons about people, procedure, politics, principles and power – all those “p” words that energize and define democracy. Things can indeed get temperamental along the way.

Still, the Virginia Senate, on balance, has been a source of political stability in the Commonwealth over recent decades and we need that. We do not gain by playing fast and loose with procedure.

Louise Lucas, by the way, fits well into the Ed Willey, Hunter Andrews, Tommy Norment, Virginia Senate tradition. She’s strong, experienced and purposeful. You have to be. You’re not corralling cats, but elected lawmakers. Cats are easier.

No one ever gets their way all the time, but you do your best on the basis of what you believe to be best.

On that same day in April, 1969, when Senator Stone got up to speak on legislative sessions, the voice of Sen. M.M. Long was heard, as well. Macon Melville Long, Sr. served in the Virginia Senate with my uncle, Issac Paul Wailes of Amherst, and managed to hang on for longer, from 1944 to 1971.

Long was born in Rappahannock County, not far out of Washington, D.C., but relocated to rural St. Paul, a small Southwest Virginia town that straddles Russell and Wise Counties. (If you’re interested, these days St. Paul is home to the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Complex, an outstanding and important source of electricity generation.)

Senator Long, another Byrd Organization loyalist (as was my uncle, as it seemed the thing to do back then) pointed out that Virginia had biennial sessions in the beginning from 1776 to 1870 and then had annual sessions from 1870 to 1876. It then went back to the biennial sessions. Annual sessions were again proposed during the 1901-02 Constitutional Convention, but there was also a serious push to limit the General Assembly to one session every four years and it nearly passed.

So this stuff goes back and forth and justifies a thoughtful discussion, especially if a serious desire emerges to establish the General Assembly as a full-time political institution. There are huge implications for going that route.

In any event, when it comes to the legislative process, it always, always matters how you get there and that absolutely applies to the handling of the governor’s appointments, which are vitally important and ought not to be treated in some half-ass partisan manner.

Keep a variation on the Golden Rule in mind: Do not do onto others in a way that opens the door to others to do unto to you.

Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column his republished with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire.