ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 5, 1996 TAG: 9603050046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
TYPE: ANALYSIS
SOURCE: ROBERT LITTLE STAFF WRITER
THE PUBLIC IS WELCOME to show up at the General Assembly. But don't count on seeing much. The real business is conducted on the fly, and only those in the know can really figure out what's happening.
Randy Foster, cutting through the marble hallways in biker boots and smudged blue jeans, looked out of place at the General Assembly. And lost. He didn't know where anything was, or how to find out. He didn't know his senator or delegate or the difference between them. He was not a lobbyist, journalist or anyone on Richmond's "inside"; just a dump truck driver from Southside.
The General Assembly can be a regal, respected and auspicious bunch, taking great pains to bare all and listen to the people. Ordinary Virginians such as Foster also can find state lawmaking a cliquish, convoluted process, not at all accommodating to the uninitiated masses.
``I can't even figure out what's happening sometimes, and I've been doing this for five years,'' said Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth. ``People have to trust us, I guess. Because they'll never be able to break in.''
Foster was one of the few who tried. He drove to Richmond on his day off last month because he heard the state government wanted to make his wolf-dog mix, Buds, illegal to own without a special license.
A call to the assembly's information office would have given him a bill number and directions to a committee meeting, but Foster didn't know that. Once he found it, he couldn't tell what the committee was doing . By the time he figured out that ``reporting'' a bill meant passing it, members had named a special subcommittee to study his issue and scheduled a meeting for the next day. Foster couldn't come back. He talked briefly with a legislative aide, then left for home.
``That's all I could do,'' said Foster, 31. ``None of them knows me or my dog, and I sort of figured they should before they go doing stuff to me. My opinion's worth something, but I bet it didn't even matter.'' |n n| Foster's experience may not be unusual. There's an exclusive and powerful kingdom inside Richmond's Capitol Square, with a language, caste system and societal privilege all its own.
General Assembly members have their own doctor and post office, their own police force, even their own license plates. Their food and lodging are free, and there's a party almost every night of the week.
Young pages fetch them coffee and sandwiches, or ferry their messages from room to room. Men in uniform stand at the chamber doors, ready to swing them open when a member wants in or out.
While Richmond schools were snowed shut for a week, two state plows kept the Capitol Square driveways cleared to the asphalt. In warmer weather, groundskeepers drain and scrub the fountains every week or so to keep the water a shimmery blue.
Members are allowed $92 a day for food and lodging, not that most would need it. The clerks keep a social calendar of cocktail receptions and lobbyist soirees that can keep an indulgent lawmaker living large right up to the last drop of the gavel.
``You could forget you're here to work if you let yourself,'' said Del. Jerrauld Jones, D-Norfolk, a nine-year veteran. ``And some people probably do.''
It's not that real people aren't welcome in the General Assembly. Virtually every legislative twitch happens in public, broadcast over microphones and gnawed on by the press. Reporters can swarm a legislator like a soccer-stadium crowd clamoring around a visiting pope.
``I had a group the other day follow me into the men's room!'' gasped Sen. Ed Schrock, a freshman Republican from Virginia Beach. ``I had to tell them, `Look, this is crossing the line. Any business I do in here is not your business.'''
The difficulty for outsiders isn't access so much as convenience. Elementary civics teaches how a bill becomes a law. You have to live and work in the capital, though, to know where and when it happens.
That's why lobbyists and reporters make camp in Richmond, creating, with the lawmakers, their own capital culture. They need to stay close because events unfold quickly and a lot of information is carried by word of mouth. There's no firm schedule of when bills come up in committees, for instance. People have to stay in touch with chairmen, with aides, with staff. Legislative virgins might grab the daily calendar of events, but it rarely reveals all the true political gyrations.
Consider this year's ``parental notification'' bill. The idea of prohibiting doctors from performing abortions on minors without first telling parents comes up every year.
The General Assembly held public hearings and published the dates on the official schedule. Speakers on both sides had their say in rooms overflowing with spectators and cameras. But the insiders knew before the hearings started how the committees would vote - if not precisely, at least in general.
The most important vote this year on parental notification came late one afternoon in the Capitol's Old Senate Chamber, a creaky side room reserved for closed-door confabs. The Senate's Rules Committee considered whether to keep the bill in the Education and Health Committee, which historically has killed the measure, or send it to the friendly Courts of Justice Committee, where it stood a much better chance of becoming law.
The meeting had been scheduled the night before, and began immediately after the full Senate adjourned. Few knew it was happening, and no public comment was allowed. In a close vote, the committee decided to do nothing, keeping the bill in the committee that had already killed another version. The whole meeting took less than 10 minutes. They never even turned on the lights.
``It was no ambush; we just had to take the vote,'' said Sen. Richard Holland, D-Isle of Wight County, chairman of the Rules Committee. ``Sometimes, that's how it's done.''
Much of the state's lawmaking is done that way - a brief public hearing on the record, then weeks of swaps and schmoozes and cloakroom arm-twisting over the details.
Sometimes lawmakers call committee meetings on the chamber floor as soon as the session ends. The public isn't allowed on the chamber floor. ``Distinguished persons'' sometimes are - Miss Virginia, foreign dignitaries, the punter for the Dallas Cowboys - but only by a two-thirds vote.
Even crafting the budget - the legislature's most monumental and conspicuous task - is largely clandestine. The state's needs and priorities are discussed in hearings and committee meetings, then eight or 10 of the legislature's most senior members grind out all the particulars in private pow-wows. This year, Sen. Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount, advanced to that elite group.
There's no great deception to it all. Virginia has been making laws that way for centuries, and legislators will tell you they've made some pretty darned good ones, thank you very much.
The annual session is a lot like a parachute jump. The legislators spend all year practicing techniques, gathering advice and packing their chutes; but when the time comes to leap, they're on their own. And things can get pretty terrifying toward the end.
This year's session lasts 60 days because the budget is due. Next year's will be 45. Either way, for the lawmakers, it means long nights and 14-hour days, especially in the final weeks. There are some personal and political spoils, for sure. But a lot of thankless minutiae as well.
``With all the comedy, with all the laughter, we are a tightly organized body that begins its work on time and ends its work on time and meets all its intermediate deadlines on time,'' said Sen. Joseph Gartlan, D-Fairfax County.
``Let's don't ever forget, or let the people of Virginia forget, why we're really here - to do their business.''
Staff Writer David M. Poole contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Long : 142 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: BILL TIERNAN/Landmark News Service. 1. Lobbyists Jeanby CNBBanks (far left) and Michelle Allen wait Monday to speak with Sen.
Stanley Walker, D-Norfolk. Jana Price-Davis (center), also a
lobbyist, was awaiting a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee, as
was a waving Lt. Gov. Don Beyer. 2. Sen. Stanley Walker, D-Norfolk
(left), confers for a moment with Sen. John Chichester,
R-Fredericksburg. color. Graphic: MapL What happens next. color. KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996