Toscano Report from General Assembly - January 17, 2006
The first week of the 2006 General Assembly Session is now over, and it has been full of exciting activities. With each day, I learn more and more about how the institution operates and develop a greater respect for the process and my colleagues. This is not to say that I agree with all of what has come before us (in fact, the critical votes taken to this point have left me in the minority), but I continue to believe that progress can be made by working with reasonable people from both sides of the aisle.
I was appointed to Courts of Justice and the Science and Technology Committees. Courts of Justice handles more bills than any single committee in the House of Delegates.
In the first week of session, the Republican majority pushed through a series of new rules that have the potential for permitting subcommittee chairs to kill bills without recorded votes. Many of us argued that this compromises transparency in government, to no avail. The good news, independent of what is written in the rules, is that a number of the committee chairs and subcommittee chairs seem to be willing to give bills a full hearing. What will happen over the course of the session, however, is anyone’s guess.
On Friday, January 13, we took up the so-called “Gay Marriage” Amendment. As many of you know, this was passed last year by the assembly and needed to be passed this year in order that it can be placed on the ballot in November, 2006. Opponents to the bill offered numerous amendments but they were all soundly defeated. The measure passed by a vote of 73 to 22. As I had promised in the campaign, I voted against the bill. I was always concerned about enshrining discrimination against one group of people in the Constitution, but hearing the debate simply reinforced additional concerns, that is, that the language of the bill is vague and overbroad, thereby creating the potential for unintended consequences that could affect family members who are not married or heterosexual couples who have lived together for years. The proponents of the bill were not willing to consider amendments and simply chose to push this bill as their first major act of the assembly. Again, it simply reinforced how one group in the assembly feels that certain hot-button social issues are so important that they feel the need to elevate them to the top of the agenda. Hopefully, we will be able to consider more significant issues for the Commonwealth, particularly in the areas of education, transportation, and health care.
As to my bills, I was able to obtain House passage of a bill to help address the nursing shortage. My absentee bill was defeated in subcommittee. I have also introduced a bill to increase the minimum wage and several bills for the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County. I was also successful in obtaining a commending resolution for John Baker, the former chair of the County School Board, who recently passed away.
Finally, I was honored to be able to participate in the inauguration of Governor Tim Kaine. During the inauguration, the House met in the old colonial capital in Williamsburg, in the actual chamber of the original House of Burgesses and House of Delegates. To sit on the benches and in the chairs that were previously occupied by the likes of Patrick Henry, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson was simply the thrill of a lifetime. Perhaps we need to have the gubernatorial inauguration in Williamsburg more often than every 200 years.
Please feel free to contact our office at 804-698-1057 or at david@davidtoscano.com. Please also pass along this email to whomever you think might find it interesting. We are attempting to assemble a list through which we may publish on a regular basis so we may better inform constituents about happenings in Richmond.
