ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 21, 1997 TAG: 9701210056
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DEL. MORGAN Griffith's crusade to make General Assembly committee assignments more equitable isn't just a matter of insider politics.
First, committee assignments are important in themselves, because make-or-break time on many a bill or budget amendment is in committee, rather than on the House or Senate floor.
Second, and even more fundamental, the slightly-in-the-majority Democrats' refusal to play fair with the slightly-in-the-minority Republicans bespeaks an overabundance of arrogance and an undersupply of respect for the principles of representative democracy. To a lesser extent, so does Griffith's lack of vocal allies from among go-along-to-get-along Republican colleagues.
It is all the sort of thing that feeds public cynicism about the political system.
The Salem Republican's beef is easily stated. Democrats hold a 53-46 House majority, with one independent. But on a powerful committee like House Appropriations, that somehow translates into 17 Democrats, the independent and only four Republicans. Moreover, House Democrats arrogate to themselves the right to decide which particular Republicans will serve on what committees.
This is unlike Congress and many other state legislatures. It is also unlike the chamber just a few yards away, the Virginia Senate, which last year came up with a power-sharing arrangement to properly reflect the 20-20 split produced by the November 1995 elections.
Whatever thought Senate Democrats may have had of trying to force the organizational hand, by turning to Democratic Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer as tie-breaker, was forestalled by the insistence of one Democrat, then-Sen. Virgil Goode, on assignments that more accurately reflected the election results.
The award for most creative alibi goes to House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell of Vinton. To give more seats on important committees to Republicans, he says, would be to politicize the process - as if the current paucity of Republican assignments to top committees were not the result of political calculation.
Shortsighted calculation at that. Democrats invite retribution if Republicans ever gain a majority in the House, a prospect not inconsistent with long-term trends in Virginia politics. A GOP mirror image of Democratic practices and prerogatives would be as objectionable as today's committee-assignment state of affairs. Yet the Democrats' continuing, high-handed intransigence makes such an outcome both more likely and less credibly an object of criticism for Democrats, should they find themselves one day in the minority.
Even now, as Griffith points out, more than partisan advantage is at stake. Republicans, just as much as Democrats, represent the people who elected them. To shut Republicans out of effective committee assignments is to shut out a sizeable portion of the people of Virginia from effective representation in state government.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1997by CNB