Cut through the rhetorical miasma of the General Assembly, and here’s what’s going on: Del. Ward Armstrong, D-Henry, has introduced Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s transportation package in the House of Delegates. So far, the governor hasn’t found anyone to introduce the same plan in the state Senate, where Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, R-Fairfax, has his own ideas.
House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, says the House won’t vote on Kaine’s bill until it passes the Democratic-controlled Senate. “It is obvious to everyone that, since a Democrat governor called this special session, the body controlled by his party should act first on his legislation,” he said. “When the governor’s allies in the Senate send us a bill that they have passed and that he will sign, then we will give it full and fair consideration.”
Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey called that a “delaying tactic.”
Bacon’s bottom line: Nobody can agree on anything. And everybody’s trying to set up somebody else to take the fall for failing to come up with a transportation “solution.”
