ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602120040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: ROBERT LITTLE STAFF WRITER
THEY VOTE ON piles of bills. But state politicians sometimes don't even understand the issues they're deciding.
A loud ping breaks the clatter, and Del. William Robinson's gaze flickers around the chamber as if his eyebrows are on fire. The noise means he has to vote, quickly. But like so many of his colleagues, Robinson isn't paying attention. And he's on the wrong side of the room.
"Is this a no? Is this no?" the Norfolk Democrat pleads, his tie flapping as he lopes toward his seat. No one offers any guidance.
"I don't know what this is, but I'm voting no," Robinson says, finding his seat. He then stamps his index finger onto the red button on his desk. The measure dies. His Democratic colleagues are visibly pleased, and Robinson ambles away with a smile.
"I got it right," the Norfolk delegate beams. The sound of 100 politicians gabbing again fills the room.
The General Assembly this week is stuck in the annual legislative snarl known as "crossover," where members push the boundaries of their skill, their stamina, their patience, their dry-cleaning. Crossover, simply, is a deadline. A proposed law introduced in the House of Delegates or the Senate must move to the other side by Wednesday morning.
Some observers marvel that Virginia's lawmakers vacate the capital every year having gotten anything right. If they saw the legislature now at its midpoint, they'd really wonder.
Lawmakers have a month to do their job, which is to write laws. Yet more than half the workload bottlenecks in the days leading to this midpoint deadline. And throughout the Capitol, their personal lives, diets, and quality of work all take a pounding.
The House and Senate took more than a week to pass their first bills; now they consider 100 or more a day. Paperwork can be measured by the palletload, coffee by the drum.
When the legislature convened in early January, daily floor sessions lasted 10 minutes or less.
Now it takes hours even on weekends, and committees convene at dawn and meet deep into the night.
Imagine 140 college sophomores coughing out term papers. Or lumberjacks in business suits, hacking away at a month-old logjam.
"Crossover," said Fairfax County Sen. Joseph Gartlan, a 24-year veteran Democrat, "is the time when all General Assembly members are punished for their past sins."
To watch, one might think the spectacle was punishing to the citizens of Virginia as well. Members don't have time to read the bills; they often simply vote with the masses. Amendments are adopted on faith.
On routine matters, one lawmaker might cast votes for two or three others who have left the room. Delegates and senators frequently have three or more meetings scheduled at the same time.
On the more significant matters, members say they focus and perform. But the less-conspicuous concerns just get dragged along with the herd, lawmakers admit.
On the floor, measures move so quickly, it's tough to keep up with the details. Robinson, in voting on an amendment to a bill allowing media easier access to prisoners, was initially satisfied with his blind vote, but later repined. If he'd had more time, he would have voted the other way, he said.
Time is precious. The Senate Courts of Justice Committee - which handles criminal laws - worked well into the evening last Wednesday. After 20 head-scratching minutes pondering a bill about child-support penalties, debate snagged on a complicated detail. Eyes narrowed, sleeves rolled higher, and butts sank deeper into seats.
Then a delivery guy with an armload of pizzas showed up, and the measure died within seconds.
Crossover is more disorderly in the House, which has far more bills to consider than the Senate. And, unlike senators, delegates don't suspend their rules on a whim and pass big chunks of laws en masse.
The pressure bore down Thursday on seven delegates - and three times as many lobbyists - who had been up since dawn cobbling together a controversial health-care bill.
"Ladies and gentleman, we have 20 minutes. One way or the other we are going to get a bill out of here," announced Del. William Bennett, D-Halifax County, leader of the group.
So when Bennett's subcommittee got stuck on a single verb, members painted over it with fuzzy language and moved on. The lobbyists didn't even know what the change meant.
The next day before the full Corporations, Insurance and Banking Committee, little changed. "I'm not sitting around here for four more hours listening to a bunch of health-care people," said Del. George H. Heilig Jr., chairman of the committee and a Norfolk democrat. The bill moved on, a half-baked cake ready to rise or fall in the Senate later.
One anonymous delegate summed up the potential for error: "You could pass the label off a pickle jar during crossover, and nobody would know the difference," he said.
No, they've never accidentally outlawed childbirth or designated smoking as the official state sport. There are no pickle jar labels enrolled in the Virginia statutes.
But in all the session's halfway hubbub, lawmakers acknowledge that their attention spans wither. They've left out letters, commas or italics over the years. They've misspelled words or even changed the wrong section of the law.
The system allows for mistakes. The clerks and their technology are efficient enough to avert catastrophes, and after crossover the opposite chambers have a month to make repairs. Once the annual session ends, members hold a one-day mop-up. They need it.
"It's always been a problem, I think, and it seems to get worse and worse," said Joseph H. Holleman Jr., House clerk in the 1970s and 1980s.
"It's really sad sometimes that they can't limit themselves and give more time to the legislation they have before them," Holleman said. "They're just figuring all their corrections can be made in the other body."
Legislation will "cross over" after Tuesday, the deadline for each House to consider its own bills (except the state budget, which commands its own separate schedule).
Decades ago there was no crossover. The only deadline was final adjournment, making the last days a frantic hopscotch around the two houses and their committees.
Of course lawmakers only considered a few hundred bills then. Now they number in the thousands. In one day this year - the deadline for submitting bills - legislators dropped 1,500 bills and resolutions on the clerks' desks.
Senators and delegates aren't afraid to admit they don't read all the laws that are passed each year, because they know it would be all but impossible. That's what committees and subcommittees are for.
"The volume of all this is at an all-time high," said Bill Wilson, director of Legislative Automated Systems. His staff toils in the basement of the General Assembly Building, and arranges printing of the bills, resolutions, amendments and schedules.
One-third of Wilson's $2.8 million budget is for printing costs, and nearly all of that is spent during the two months the state legislature is in town. Just printing the bills and resolutions can cost almost $450,000 in a busy year. The budget bill alone costs $38,000.
When the General Assembly makes changes to a bill, it typically casts a final vote on the measure the next day. By then, 1,200 or more copies of the amended proposal have to be available for circulation.
Forty years ago, the assembly pasted in amendments or wrote them in the margins. Without Xeroxes and computers, "There were only about three copies back then," said Holleman, who began working for the General Assembly's printing room in the 1940s. "They could come down and look at it if they wanted to."
There's a simple explanation for the legislature's developed fondness for paperwork, Wilson said. It's so easy to produce, everyone takes it for granted.
"I have to blame the technology, as much as I love it," Wilson said. "From the days when they used straight pens and scissors and tape, the number of [complete rewrites] they ask for has increased phenomenally."
Things looked pretty low-tech Saturday in the House of Delegates, where members crammed in a few hours of weekend tinkering. Speaker Thomas Moss, D-Norfolk, gavel in hand, often looked like a one-man show. The room was full, but nobody appeared to be paying any attention.
"Those in favor ... will say aye," Moss said. Pause. No one responded.
"Those opposed?" No answer again.
Moss declared the measures passed and moved on.
Del. Riley Ingram, R-Hopewell, stood up and broke the drudgery at one point, but only to crack a joke.
"Apparently the body has unlimited time," Moss answered, nose high.
"You're all going to be awfully sorry at about two o'clock Wednesday morning. So just keep it up."
Staff writer David M. Poole contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Long : 167 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: BILL TIERNAN/Landmark News Service. 1. House Majorityby CNBLeader Richard Cranwell (left), D-Vinton, confers with General Laws
Committee Chairman Alan Diamonstein, D-Newport News, on the floor
of the Virginia House of Delegates. 2. Rosemary Ridgley-Sanders
(above left), mother of a student at the Virginia School for the
Deaf and Blind at Hampton, listens as school librarian Claudine
Payne (right) speaks against the school's closing. 3. Sen. Emmett
Hanger (photo at right), R-Augusta County, is the author of a bill
to consolidate the Hampton school with its counterpart in Staunton.
color. 4. Del. Richard Cranwell, D-Vinton, talks with Jerrauld
Jones, D-Norfolk, about raising the speed limit on certain roads. KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996