ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 5, 1996 TAG: 9603050063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: RICHMOND
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS AND WARREN FISKE STAFF WRITERS
Somehow in the next five days, Virginia's $35 billion budget will get passed.
But a procedural fight among three legislative powerhouses is gumming up the works and could result in lawmakers having little time to digest last-minute changes in the budget before voting on them.
At stake, say House Speaker Thomas Moss and Senate Finance Committee co-chairmen Stanley Walker and John Chichester, are principle and philosophy, as well as political payback.
At issue is who gets to serve on a plum committee charged with working out a compromise between House and Senate versions of the state budget. By tradition, each chamber appoints four members.
But this year, as part of a power-sharing arrangement between Democrats and Republicans, the Senate decided to increase its membership to five. The problem is that the House has refused to expand, and Moss, D-Norfolk, has ordered House conferees not to meet until the Senate accedes.
Normally, with the end of the session approaching Saturday, the budget negotiators would be haggling over such issues as how much to raise teachers' pay or whether to divert industry recruitment dollars to schools.
Instead, they aren't talking.
As a midnight deadline for reaching a compromise on the budget looms, senators are conferring only with other senators on the budget and delegates with delegates.
``We've not even established procedure, and we're not going to establish it until the Senate gives us four [conferees] to meet with,'' said Del. Alan Diamonstein, D-Newport News, one of the House negotiators.
There's at least a three-way split on how the issue should be resolved:
* Moss, who sees a 10-member conference committee as unwieldy, unwarranted and unprecedented is insisting that the Senate drop a person.
* Chichester, the Republican co-chairman from Fredericksburg, is insisting that Sen. Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount, stay. Goode was promised one of the five Senate seats in return for siding with Republicans on some critical organizational votes.
* And Walker, a Norfolk Democrat, is insisting that the Senate honor seniority as long as Chichester isn't naming a Republican to the committee. If there is to be a four-member team, based on seniority, it should be Walker, Chichester, Charles Colgan of Manassas and Joseph Gartlan, D-Fairfax County, he says.
Colgan is one of the Senate's most conservative Democrats; Gartlan is one of the most liberal.
Walker believes the budget views could be shaped by five Senators and four Delegates without tipping power away from the House. Last year, he said, the budget conference committee never actually met, but sent messages back and forth through staff until agreement was reached.
Diamonstein remembers the matter differently. In his recollection, last year's eight-member committee actually voted on specific budget questions. In that scenario, giving the Senate one extra vote would be idiocy, he suggests.
While the House and the Senate are largely in agreement on most major spending points, there are important differences on teacher pay raises, testing public school students, spending for economic development and a variety of issues.
Moss said that today's deadline for conference committee action on the budget could be extended. But with the General Assembly scheduled to adjourn Saturday, Moss warned that each hour of delay will mean one less hour that lawmakers will have to review the spending compromise.
An aide to Walker said that Moss had banned the House appropriations staff from talking with the senate finance staff. Moss couldn't be reach for comment late Monday.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB