ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 17, 1996 TAG: 9601170019
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
A BOOST in the size of the Virginia Senate and the House of Delegates by one seat each, to 41 and 101 respectively, would be the result of an amendment to the state Constitution proposed by Sen. Madison Marye. The aim is to avoid future ties like the Senate's current 20-20 party split.
Not that Marye expects it to go very far: The Shawsville Democrat says it's "one of those bills I put in for people to think about."
OK, we've thought about it - and concluded that it misses the point.
First, the Virginia Constitution already allows odd-numbered legislative chambers. The Senate can consist of from 33 to 40 seats; the House, from 90 to 100. Having the maximum (and even) number of seats in each house is a legislative decision, not a constitutional mandate. The General Assembly could transform itself into odd-numbered bodies on its own, by reducing the number of seats in each house by one at redistricting time.
Second, an odd number of seats wouldn't necessarily prevent an evenly split chamber. So long as Del. Lacey Putney of Bedford remains the House's sole independent member, for example, an even number of seats guarantees there'll be no even party division. (The actual count at the moment is 52 Democrats to 47 Republicans.)
Third, it wasn't the 20-20 floor split that prevented Democrats from organizing the Senate on their own; it was the insistence by Democratic (for now, anyway) Sen. Virgil Goode of Rocky Mount on sharing power with the Republicans. If old-style party discipline had held firm, Democratic Lt. Gov. Don Beyer - the constitutionally designated tiebreaker on most Senate votes - would have given Democrats the decisive 21st vote.
(Assuming the split stays 20-20 on the Senate floor, election of a Republican two years from now as lieutenant governor would make the GOP the de facto majority Senate party - unless it, too, has at least one member who refuses to go along.)
Finally, Marye's proposal implies a belief that power-sharing is worth avoiding in the future. True, negotiations over organization deferred the start of Senate business by a couple of days last week. But isn't the outcome - a system for conducting such business in a manner that more accurately reflects the election results - worth the slight delay?
The power-sharing bargaining advanced a spirit of bipartisan cooperation that might not be so evident had Republicans won a Senate majority last November and simply replaced Democratic rule with their own.
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